A Joint Venture

Hearing & Communication Neuroscience is an inter-disciplinary program jointly sponsored by the Neuroscience Graduate Program at USC and the House Ear Institute (HEI), one of the foremost hearing research centers in the world. Our goal is to bring together scientists working in diverse areas of hearing and vocal communication and provide outstanding training opportunities for graduate students and postdoctoral scholars.

Between the House Ear Institute

Scientists in the Hearing & Communication Neuroscience (HCN) program perform inter-disciplinary research across multiple levels of analysis from molecular and cellular biology to cognitive, linguistic, and behavioral neuroscience. The goal is a detailed understanding of mechanisms involved in the development and function of the auditory nervous system at the level of individual cells and neural circuits, as well as cognitive constructs such as neural representations of memories, plans and actions. An integrated knowledge of mechanisms at different levels of analysis is a necessary pre-requisite for advancing our understanding of etiologies for a broad spectrum of hearing and communication disorders, thereby leading to cures and treatments.

And the USC Neuroscience Graduate Program

HCN represents a natural evolution of two strong research programs that integrates a broad assortment of outstanding scientists across levels of analysis including approaches based on cell-molecular neurobiology, genetics, development, linguistics, and systems and cognitive neuroscience. In addition, because of the strong ties to patient-oriented studies at HEI, the program offers opportunities for facilitating interactions between basic scientific research and its potential applications, and exposing graduate students and postdocs to cutting-edge clinical practices.