The Knowles Prize

2023 Knowles Prize Winner

Peter Narins has had a long and estimable career in neuroscience, covering a range of topics falling under the broad theme of understanding the mechanics and physiology behind the extraction of information from the environment. One advance that sets Narins apart from others in this space is his groundbreaking research into the detection and processing of non-airborne vibrations, a route of information gathering that is simultaneously of a piece with hearing and something gratifyingly different.

As we all know, sound, at its core, is a vibration. However, little attention has been devoted to the world of vibrations that arrive at the inner ear having bypassed the tympanic membrane. Ground-borne vibrations play a role in mating behavior in animals such as mole rats, who use foot drumming to communicate their reproductive condition. Foot drumming is transmitted both through the air and seismically; however, only the seismic vibrations travel the distance necessary for inter-burrow communication. Indeed, seismic vibrations propagate an order of magnitude better than airborne sounds (Narins et al., J Comp Physiol (A) 1992). Narins discovered that mole rats’ enlarged ossicles are the evolutionary basis for this extratympanic mechanical vibration reception (Narins et al., Brain Res Bull 1997).

Frogs, too, employ vibrations and Narins has done fieldwork to demonstrate this. When a male white-lipped frog croaks, its vocal pouch expands and strikes the ground. Narins simulated male frogs’ ground thumping with a device that ensured no airborne sounds were simultaneously produced and discovered that frogs up to three meters away entrained to the thump and produced a chorus in reaction (Narins, Sci Amer, 1995). Incidental airborne sounds, in the case of the white-lipped frog, are wholly unnecessary. Likewise, the blind Namib Desert golden mole uses seismic cues to locate food.

His other notable discoveries include:

The mechanism of phase cancellation in the tympanic membrane that prevents the inner ear from being overstimulated when a frog produces calls at intensities of more than 110 dB SPL.

Some frog species can communicate (i.e., produce and hear sounds) in excess of 40 kHz.

The traveling wave phenomenon applies to the tectorial membrane as well as the basilar membrane.

That frog calls shift based on ambient temperature, a discovery that formed the basis of an argument that changes in frog calls over time can monitor global warming.

Narins earned his masters (electrical engineering) and doctorate (neurobiology) from Cornell and, following a postdoc at the University of Keele in the UK, has been a professor of physiological science at UCLA since 1978.  Aside from his field work in all seven continents, his lab work runs the gamut from conventional (single fiber neurophysiology) to cutting edge (laser Doppler interferometry).

 

2022 Knowles Prize Winner

The major theme through Barbara Canlon's work is to understand the mechanisms of injury in the cochlea, and to use this knowledge to develop strategies to prevent and treat cochlear injury. What sets Canlon apart, however, is that she doggedly pursues this basic question—cochlear injury—from countless angles and perspectives. Her research knows no disciplinary boundaries, combining basic hearing science, central neurophysiology, clinical audiology, nanotechnology, genetics, pharmacology, and epidemiology.

Canlon and her colleagues identified one of the first neurotrophins that protects hair cells from noise damage, a concept well ahead of its time (Ernfors et al., 1996, Nat Med; Duan et al., 2000, PNAS). She also has a longstanding line of research studying how sound conditioning protects the cochlea from noise damage (Canlon et al., 1988, Hear Res). She has since produced an influential body of work unlocking the mechanisms of this provocative phenomenon, identifying the role of the stress system and steroid receptors on modulating cochlear function (Tahera et al., 2007, Neurobiol Dis; Meltser et al., 2008, JCI). Canlon has never been bound by existing techniques, and has built strong international and interdisciplinary partnerships to develop novel technologies and experimental approaches (e.g., Simon et al., 2009, Nat Mat).

 

Recently Canlon has identified a circadian clock in the auditory system that regulates sensitivity to noise damage (Meltser et al., 2014, Curr Biol; Park et al., 2016, J Neurosci; Ibid., 2017, Curr Biol). This research has exerted an immediate and significant impact on the field and has all of the hallmarks of Canlon’s work: an innovative combination of physiology and genetics driven by her quest to understand the mechanisms of, and protections from, noise damage. This line of work also reflects Canlon’s signature ability to learn a new field—in this case, circadian biology—seemingly overnight. Wherever her work takes her, she becomes an expert.

Canlon is also one of the few scientists who, throughout her career, has had a parallel line of clinical research in humans, pursuing the same questions of genetic, environmental, and stress-related contributors to hearing loss and tinnitus (Hasson et al., 2011, BMC Public Health; Canlon et al., 2013, Hear Res).

On top of her remarkable research, Canlon has been a leader in the field. She is editor-in-chief of Hearing Research, the premier hearing science journal. The journal’s prestige has grown under her leadership, including through an influential set of annual reviews, highly topical special issues, and a speedy and fair review process. Canlon has also served on foundation boards and grant review bodies and trained several independent scientists. She is a generous member of the hearing research community, both in the US and Europe.

2016 Knowles Prize Winner

From her Knowles acceptance speech abstract:

The traditional approach to the neurophysiology of hearing has been mostly elaborated by physicists and biophysicists on the basis of the responses of the auditory system to pure tones. While this approach revealed the exquisite spectrotemporal analysis carried out by the cochlea, the last three decades saw the emergence of a complementary approach focusing on natural and behaviorally significant sounds, which revealed their specific acoustic features and optimal processing by the auditory system. The cellular and molecular mechanisms underpinning these properties remained, however, largely unknown; the paucity of the cells involved prevented biochemical and molecular genetic analyses. We initiated a genetic approach to pinpoint the proteins essential to the development and the functioning of the auditory system based on the identification of the genes responsible for monogenic forms of sensorineural deafness in humans. We assembled these basic components into molecular complexes and machineries, and gradually revealed their roles and modes of action through multidisciplinary approaches largely based on the use of specifically engineered mouse mutants. Hence, the cohesion of the hair bundle, the sensory antenna of the auditory sensory cells, was shown to depend critically on stereociliary fibrous links, which were also unmasked as essential for the hair bundle's functional polarity, the control of the stereocilia length, and the property of cochlear suppressive masking. The intrinsic properties of the hair cell synapse, that contribute to the fast operating speed and the extremely precise temporal encoding of sound features by the auditory system, could be related to the unusual molecular composition of its synaptic vesicle exocytosis machinery. Enlightening the way the auditory system withstands the continuous stress of the environmental noise, it was found to be endowed by a dynamic adaptive proliferation/fission of peroxisomes buffering harmful oxidative stress. Based on the knowledge generated by these studies, the management of hearing impairment has greatly improved and strategies for treating the various forms of deafness are now being developed.

2013 Knowles Prize Winner

Dr. Zatorre, based at the Montreal Neurological Institute, has revolutionized the field of the neuroscience of music and made key contributions to the hearing sciences.

From his Knowles acceptance speech abstract:

Music has existed in human societies since prehistory, perhaps in part because it allows expression and regulation of emotion, and evokes pleasure. In my Knowles acceptance speech, I will present findings from cognitive neuroscience that bear on the question of how we get from perception of sound patterns to pleasurable responses. First I will identify some of the auditory cortical circuits that are responsible for encoding and storage of tonal patterns. I will discuss evidence that cortical loops between auditory and frontal cortices are important for maintaining musical information in working memory, and for the recognition of structural regularities in musical patterns which then lead to expectancies. I will review evidence concerning the mesolimbic striatal system and its involvement in reward, motivation and pleasure in other domains. Recent data from our lab indicate that this dopaminergic system mediates pleasure associated with music; specifically, that reward value for music can be coded by activity levels in the nucleus accumbens, whose functional connectivity with auditory and frontal areas increases as a function of increasing musical reward. We propose that pleasure in music arises from interactions between cortical loops that enable predictions and expectancies to emerge from sound patterns, and subcortical systems responsible for reward and valuation. I have made seminal discoveries regarding the neuroanatomy of the auditory system, the relationship between the auditory and motor systems, hemispheric lateralization, language representation in bilingual brains, the interplay among the auditory, affect and reward systems, and auditory imagery and cognition.

2008 Knowles Prize Winner

Dr. Moore’s research interests include the perception of sound, mechanisms of normal hearing and hearing impairment, relationship of auditory abilities to speech perception, design of signal processing hearing aids for sensorineural hearing loss, methods for fitting hearing aids to the individual, design and specification of high-fidelity sound-reproducing equipment, and the perception of music and of musical instruments.

From his Knowles acceptance speech abstract:

Any complex sound that enters the normal ear is decomposed by the auditory filters into a series of relatively narrowband signals. Each of these signals can be considered as a slowly varying envelope (E) superimposed on a more rapid temporal fine structure (TFS). The TFS is represented in the patterns of phase locking in the auditory nerve. I will consider the role played by TFS in a variety of psychoacoustic tasks. I will argue that cues derived from TFS may play an important role in the ability to “listen in the dips” of a fluctuating background sound. TFS cues also play a role in pitch perception, the ability to hear out partials from complex tones, and sound localization. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, TFS cues may be important for the ability to hear a target talker in the spectral and temporal dips of a background talker. Evidence will be reviewed suggesting that cochlear hearing loss reduces the ability to use TFS cues for both pitch perception and speech perception. The perceptual consequences of this, and reasons why it may happen, will be discussed. Finally, possible applications of these findings to the choice of compression speed in hearing aids will be discussed.

2005 Knowles Prize Winner

Dr. Dallos was awarded the Knowles Prize for his contributions to the understanding of the workings of the inner ear. Dr. Dallos’ work has been aimed at understanding the biophysics and neurobiology of the mammalian cochlea. Using techniques ranging from animal behavior to single-cell recording, his laboratory has focused on delineating the physiological properties and functional roles of inner and outer hair cells, the two types of sensory receptors of the inner ear. Most recently, Dr. Dallos and his colleagues cloned the gene Prestin, which codes for the distinctive molecular motor of outer hair cells.

2000 Knowles Prize Winner

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1997 Knowles Prize Winner

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1995 Knowles Prize Winner

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1992 Knowles Prize Winner

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