Hearing loss is the most frequent sensory deficit and is constantly on the rise as a result of higher life expectancy and increasing over-exposure to noise – whether caused by ever denser urbanization or headphone use, especially in young people.

The aim of the Hearing Institute is to improve understanding of the principles and mechanisms that underpin the development and workings of the auditory system. Its research fields particularly include auditory perception and cognition, audio communication, multisensory integration, and interactions between the genome and the acoustic environment.

The brain and sensory organs are so complex that it is vital to draw on knowledge from a wide range of disciplines, from biophysics to computational neuroscience. It is important to investigate the auditory system from the periphery to the center; in other words from the reception of sound to recognition of its meaning and identification of the behavior triggered as a result.