Hair Cell Regeneration-Functional Significance

描述(由申请人提供)：听力丧失及其带来的所有后果，对儿童和成年人的言语和语言都具有毁灭性的后果。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。出于这个原因，重要的是要知道在鸟类毛细胞再生后，听力是否完全恢复，如果不是，对听力和发声产生的永久、持久的影响是什么。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发声输出和发声学习的影响。目前的研究计划继续努力了解毛细胞再生后的功能恢复。现在我们特别关注两个物种，它们提供了截然不同但独特的机会来理解功能的恢复。这一新的、更有重点的工作是上一个项目期新的和令人兴奋的发现的结果。首先，我们重点了解鹦鹉听力恢复与发声精确度和发声学习恢复之间的关系。一种在动物体内控制发声和学习的新方法为听力损失和发声研究打开了一扇全新的窗口。第二个焦点是比利时水怪金丝雀。我们之前的工作证实，该物种患有遗传性听力障碍，原因是基底乳头上的毛细胞缺失或受损，它们不断地再生新的毛细胞，增加再生的速度可以治愈在BWS金丝雀中观察到的一些遗传阈值偏移。

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.