Hair Cell Regeneration-Functional Significance

描述（由申请人提供）：听力损失及其所带来的一切，对儿童和成人的人类言语和语言都有毁灭性的后果。鸟类毛细胞再生的发现为最终通过毛细胞再生恢复人类听力提供了新的希望。因此，重要的是要知道鸟类毛细胞再生后听力是否完全恢复，如果不是，对听力和发声产生的永久性，持久性影响是什么。这一领域的进展一直具有挑战性，因为直到最近，还完全没有动物模型来研究听力损失对声音输出和声音学习的影响。目前的研究计划继续努力了解毛细胞再生后功能的恢复。现在，我们特别关注两个物种，它们为理解功能恢复提供了完全不同但独特的机会。这一新的、更有针对性的努力是上一个项目期间新的、令人兴奋的发现的结果。首先，我们着重了解虎皮鹦鹉听力恢复与发音准确度和发音学习恢复之间的关系。一种控制动物发声和学习的新方法为研究听力损失和发声打开了一扇全新的窗户。第二个重点是比利时的Waterslager金丝雀。我们以前的工作证实，由于基底乳头上的毛细胞缺失或受损，该物种具有遗传性听力障碍，它们不断再生新的毛细胞，并且增加再生速度可以“治愈”在BWS金丝雀中观察到的一些遗传性阈值偏移。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The loss of hearing, and all that entails, has devastating consequences for human speech and language both in children and adults. The discovery of hair cell regeneration in birds has provided new hope of eventually restoring hearing in humans through hair cell regeneration. For this reason, it is important to know whether hearing is fully restored following hair cell regeneration in birds and, if not, what are the permanent, enduring effects on hearing and vocal production. Progress in this area has been challenging because, until recently, there is a complete absence of animal models for studying the effect of hearing loss on vocal output and vocal learning. The present research plan continues effort to understand the recovery of function following hair cell regeneration. Now we focus specifically on two species that provide quite different but unique opportunities for understanding the recovery of function. This new, more focused effort is the result of new and exciting findings from the last project period. First, we focus on understanding the relation between hearing recovery in budgerigars and the recovery in vocal precision and vocal learning. A new method for controlling vocal production and learning in an animal opens a whole new window on the study of hearing loss and vocal production. The second focus is on the Belgian Waterslager Canary. Our previous work confirmed that this species has an inherited hearing disorder due to missing or damaged hair cells on the basilar papilla, that they are constantly regenerating new hair cells, and that increasing the rate of regeneration can "cure" some of the inherited threshold shift observed in BWS canaries.