Here is a little bit about me. I grew up in a household where miscommunication was a common occurance. Between living with grandma, two older sisters, my two brother-in-laws, mom, dad, and our dog Jolie, we had a lot of reasons to miscommunicate. Polish, English, French and even the occasional German word ran through the household. There were invented words, gesticulations, and even the occasional raising of voices to get our point across. Then there was hearing loss, an underlying problem that no one talked about or acknowledged but that was a definite contributor to lost messages and isolation. I can’t say that I knew I wanted to be an audiologist from the moment I was born, but I can say that I knew that I had my work cut out for me at a young age.
Now as an “early-career” professor at the University of Montréal, I am eager to find better ways to help people communicate. We know that there are some fantastic hearing aid technologies but do they really take full advantage of our brain-to-ear connection enabling us to best understand each other? I argue that our auditory systems are so sophisticated that our go-to solution of just turning up the volume in our ears may need to be expanded.
I hope to share with you some of the exciting projects we are working on. Some are collaborations with other fellow colleagues and some are work that was started in this lab. We hope that it all accumulates to a better understanding of our hearing, new ways to evaluate and treat hearing loss, and getting the conversation going about what actually works when miscommunication becomes a daily challenge.
Cognition, Audition and Time Lab 