Edwin Rubel

Last updated
Edwin Rubel
Born
Edwin W Rubel

(1942-05-08) May 8, 1942 (age 81)
Chicago, IL
Alma mater Michigan State University
(BS, MS, PhD)
AwardsAward of Merit, ARO, 2005
Fellow, AAAS, 1990
Scientific career
Institutions Yale
University of Virginia
University of Washington

Edwin Rubel is an American academic and Developmental Neurobiologist holding the position of emeritus professor at the University of Washington. He was the Founding Director and first Virginia Merrill Bloedel Chair in Basic Hearing Research from 1989 to 2017.

Contents

Education

Rubel completed his undergraduate and graduate education at Michigan State University. He received his MA in Psychology in 1967 for the thesis "Imprinting in the Quail, Coturnix coturnix". [1] He received his PhD in Psychology in 1969 for his thesis entitled "A comparison of somatotopic organization in sensory neocortex of newborn kittens and adult cats", [2] published in the Journal of Comparative Neurology in 1971. [3] His PhD advisors were John I. Johnson. [4] and Glen I. Hatton.

Scientific career

Rubel's research is on methods and preparations to better understand the development, plasticity, pathology and potential repair of the inner ear and auditory pathways of the brain, [5] and has published over 300 papers. [6] He has made contributions to several different areas of auditory neuroscience. [7] These include studies of the development and plasticity of neurons in the auditory brainstem, damage and regeneration of hair cells and protection of the mechanosensory cells in the inner ear for hearing and balance.

Auditory brainstem

Rubel and colleagues made considerable contributions to the study of the auditory brainstem, describing the anatomy, organization, development and plasticity of these structures in birds and mammals. Studies included descriptions of the tonotopic organization of brainstem nuclei in chick, [8] [9] leading to identification of neural circuitry underlying interaural time differences. [10] [11] His group also studied the effects of cochlear removal on brainstem organization in chick [12] and in gerbil, [13] demonstrating a critical period for cochlear influences.

Hair cell regeneration

Rubel and colleagues demonstrated that hair cell regeneration occurred in birds after exposure to aminoglycoside antibiotics [14] or acoustic trauma, [15] paralleling studies by Cotanche [16] and Corwin and Cotanche. [17] Prior to these studies it was generally believed that hair cell regeneration did not occur in warm-blooded animals. [18]

Hair cell damage and prevention of hearing loss

With colleagues at the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Rubel develop the zebrafish as a model system for understanding hair cell damage and regeneration. [19] [20] Studies identified mutations that altered susceptibility to ototoxic agents, and small molecule screens for compounds that prevent hair cell damage. [21] Through iterative chemistry, they developed a lead compound with improved otoprotective potency, improved pharmacokinetic properties and reduced off-target activity (ORC-13661). [22] This compound has been licensed to Oricula Therapeutics, co-founded by Rubel, and has been approved for use in humans by the FDA. [23]

Service, honors and awards

Rubel served on the advisory council of the National Institute on Deafness and Communication Disorders from 1991 to 1995. He became a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1999. Rubel served as president of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology (ARO) in 1999, and was awarded the Award of Merit from the ARO in 2005. [24] He has served on the editorial boards of a number of journals including Hearing Research, Journal of Neuroscience and the Journal of Comparative Neurology.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cochlea</span> Snail-shaped part of inner ear involved in hearing

The cochlea is the part of the inner ear involved in hearing. It is a spiral-shaped cavity in the bony labyrinth, in humans making 2.75 turns around its axis, the modiolus. A core component of the cochlea is the organ of Corti, the sensory organ of hearing, which is distributed along the partition separating the fluid chambers in the coiled tapered tube of the cochlea.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Organ of Corti</span> Receptor organ for hearing

The organ of Corti, or spiral organ, is the receptor organ for hearing and is located in the mammalian cochlea. This highly varied strip of epithelial cells allows for transduction of auditory signals into nerve impulses' action potential. Transduction occurs through vibrations of structures in the inner ear causing displacement of cochlear fluid and movement of hair cells at the organ of Corti to produce electrochemical signals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Auditory system</span> Sensory system used for hearing

The auditory system is the sensory system for the sense of hearing. It includes both the sensory organs and the auditory parts of the sensory system.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Solitary nucleus</span> Sensory nuclei in medulla oblongata

The solitary nucleus is a series of sensory nuclei forming a vertical column of grey matter in the medulla oblongata of the brainstem. It receives general visceral and/or special visceral inputs from the facial nerve, glossopharyngeal nerve and vagus nerve ; it receives and relays stimuli related to taste and visceral sensation. It sends outputs to various parts of the brain. Neuron cell bodies of the SN are roughly somatotopically arranged along its length according to function.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hair cell</span> Auditory sensory receptor nerve cells

Hair cells are the sensory receptors of both the auditory system and the vestibular system in the ears of all vertebrates, and in the lateral line organ of fishes. Through mechanotransduction, hair cells detect movement in their environment.

In physiology, tonotopy is the spatial arrangement of where sounds of different frequency are processed in the brain. Tones close to each other in terms of frequency are represented in topologically neighbouring regions in the brain. Tonotopic maps are a particular case of topographic organization, similar to retinotopy in the visual system.

Auditory neuropathy (AN) is a hearing disorder in which the outer hair cells of the cochlea are present and functional, but sound information is not transmitted sufficiently by the auditory nerve to the brain. Hearing loss with AN can range from normal hearing sensitivity to profound hearing loss.

Presbycusis, or age-related hearing loss, is the cumulative effect of aging on hearing. It is a progressive and irreversible bilateral symmetrical age-related sensorineural hearing loss resulting from degeneration of the cochlea or associated structures of the inner ear or auditory nerves. The hearing loss is most marked at higher frequencies. Hearing loss that accumulates with age but is caused by factors other than normal aging is not presbycusis, although differentiating the individual effects of distinct causes of hearing loss can be difficult.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cochlear nerve</span> Nerve carrying auditory information from the inner ear to the brain

The cochlear nerve is one of two parts of the vestibulocochlear nerve, a cranial nerve present in amniotes, the other part being the vestibular nerve. The cochlear nerve carries auditory sensory information from the cochlea of the inner ear directly to the brain. The other portion of the vestibulocochlear nerve is the vestibular nerve, which carries spatial orientation information to the brain from the semicircular canals, also known as semicircular ducts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cochlear nucleus</span> Two cranial nerve nuclei of the human brainstem

The cochlear nuclear (CN) complex comprises two cranial nerve nuclei in the human brainstem, the ventral cochlear nucleus (VCN) and the dorsal cochlear nucleus (DCN). The ventral cochlear nucleus is unlayered whereas the dorsal cochlear nucleus is layered. Auditory nerve fibers, fibers that travel through the auditory nerve carry information from the inner ear, the cochlea, on the same side of the head, to the nerve root in the ventral cochlear nucleus. At the nerve root the fibers branch to innervate the ventral cochlear nucleus and the deep layer of the dorsal cochlear nucleus. All acoustic information thus enters the brain through the cochlear nuclei, where the processing of acoustic information begins. The outputs from the cochlear nuclei are received in higher regions of the auditory brainstem.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Superior olivary complex</span> Collection of brainstem nuclei related to hearing

The superior olivary complex (SOC) or superior olive is a collection of brainstem nuclei that functions in multiple aspects of hearing and is an important component of the ascending and descending auditory pathways of the auditory system. The SOC is intimately related to the trapezoid body: most of the cell groups of the SOC are dorsal to this axon bundle while a number of cell groups are embedded in the trapezoid body. Overall, the SOC displays a significant interspecies variation, being largest in bats and rodents and smaller in primates.

A topographic map is the ordered projection of a sensory surface, like the retina or the skin, or an effector system, like the musculature, to one or more structures of the central nervous system. Topographic maps can be found in all sensory systems and in many motor systems.

Binaural fusion or binaural integration is a cognitive process that involves the combination of different auditory information presented binaurally, or to each ear. In humans, this process is essential in understanding speech as one ear may pick up more information about the speech stimuli than the other.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ventral cochlear nucleus</span>

In the ventral cochlear nucleus (VCN), auditory nerve fibers enter the brain via the nerve root in the VCN. The ventral cochlear nucleus is divided into the anterior ventral (anteroventral) cochlear nucleus (AVCN) and the posterior ventral (posteroventral) cochlear nucleus (PVCN). In the VCN, auditory nerve fibers bifurcate, the ascending branch innervates the AVCN and the descending branch innervates the PVCN and then continue to the dorsal cochlear nucleus. The orderly innervation by auditory nerve fibers gives the AVCN a tonotopic organization along the dorsoventral axis. Fibers that carry information from the apex of the cochlea that are tuned to low frequencies contact neurons in the ventral part of the AVCN; those that carry information from the base of the cochlea that are tuned to high frequencies contact neurons in the dorsal part of the AVCN. Several populations of neurons populate the AVCN. Bushy cells receive input from auditory nerve fibers through particularly large endings called end bulbs of Held. They contact stellate cells through more conventional boutons.

The olivocochlear system is a component of the auditory system involved with the descending control of the cochlea. Its nerve fibres, the olivocochlear bundle (OCB), form part of the vestibulocochlear nerve, and project from the superior olivary complex in the brainstem (pons) to the cochlea.

The neural encoding of sound is the representation of auditory sensation and perception in the nervous system. The complexities of contemporary neuroscience are continually redefined. Thus what is known of the auditory system has been continually changing. The encoding of sounds includes the transduction of sound waves into electrical impulses along auditory nerve fibers, and further processing in the brain.

Amblyaudia is a term coined by Dr. Deborah Moncrieff to characterize a specific pattern of performance from dichotic listening tests. Dichotic listening tests are widely used to assess individuals for binaural integration, a type of auditory processing skill. During the tests, individuals are asked to identify different words presented simultaneously to the two ears. Normal listeners can identify the words fairly well and show a small difference between the two ears with one ear slightly dominant over the other. For the majority of listeners, this small difference is referred to as a "right-ear advantage" because their right ear performs slightly better than their left ear. But some normal individuals produce a "left-ear advantage" during dichotic tests and others perform at equal levels in the two ears. Amblyaudia is diagnosed when the scores from the two ears are significantly different with the individual's dominant ear score much higher than the score in the non-dominant ear Researchers interested in understanding the neurophysiological underpinnings of amblyaudia consider it to be a brain based hearing disorder that may be inherited or that may result from auditory deprivation during critical periods of brain development. Individuals with amblyaudia have normal hearing sensitivity but have difficulty hearing in noisy environments like restaurants or classrooms. Even in quiet environments, individuals with amblyaudia may fail to understand what they are hearing, especially if the information is new or complicated. Amblyaudia can be conceptualized as the auditory analog of the better known central visual disorder amblyopia. The term “lazy ear” has been used to describe amblyaudia although it is currently not known whether it stems from deficits in the auditory periphery or from other parts of the auditory system in the brain, or both. A characteristic of amblyaudia is suppression of activity in the non-dominant auditory pathway by activity in the dominant pathway which may be genetically determined and which could also be exacerbated by conditions throughout early development.

The dorsal tegmental nucleus (DTN), also known as dorsal tegmental nucleus of Gudden (DTg), is a group of neurons located in the brain stem, which are involved in spatial navigation and orientation.

Sarah M. N. Woolley is a neuroscientist and Professor of Psychology at Columbia University's Zuckerman Institute. Her work centers on the neuroscience of communication, using songbirds to understand how the brain learns and understands vocal communication.

Inner ear regeneration is the biological process by which the hair cells and supporting cells of the ear proliferate and regrow after hair cell injury. This process depends on communication between supporting cells and the brain. Because of the volatility of the inner ear's hair cells, regeneration is crucial to the functioning of the inner ear. It is also a limited process, which contributes to the irreversibility of hearing loss in humans and other mammals.

References

  1. ↑ Rubel, Edwin W (1967). Imprinting in the Quail, Coturnix coturnix (MA). Michigan State University. doi:10.25335/M5P843X3B . Retrieved October 26, 2021.
  2. ↑ Rubel, Edwin W (1969). A comparison of somatotopic organization in sensory neocortex of newborn kittens and adult cats (PhD). Michigan State University. doi:10.25335/M5KK94M48 . Retrieved October 26, 2021.
  3. ↑ Rubel, Edwin W (1971). "A comparison of somatotopic organization in sensory neocortex of newborn kittens and adult cats". J Comp Neurol. 143 (4): 447–480. doi:10.1002/cne.901430404. PMID   11393201. S2CID   15475388.
  4. ↑ "John "Jack" Irwin Johnson, Ph.D." MSU Division of Human Anatomy. Retrieved 2021-10-27.
  5. ↑ "Rubel Lab". washington.edu. Retrieved May 13, 2017.
  6. ↑ Search Results for author Rubel EW on PubMed .
  7. ↑ Cramer, Karina S.; Coffin, Allison B. (2017). "Auditory System Development: A Tribute to Edwin W Rubel". Auditory Development and Plasticity. Springer Handbook of Auditory Research. Vol. 64. pp. 1–15. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-21530-3_1. ISBN   978-3-319-21529-7.
  8. ↑ Rubel EW, Parks TN (1975). "Organization and development of brain stem auditory nuclei of the chicken: tonotopic organization of n. magnocellularis and n. laminaris". J Comp Neurol. 164 (4): 411–33. doi:10.1002/cne.901640403. PMID   1206127. S2CID   605374.
  9. ↑ Parks TN, Rubel EW (1975). "Organization and development of brain stem auditory nuclei of the chicken: organization of projections from n. magnocellularis to n. laminaris". J Comp Neurol. 164 (4): 435–48. doi:10.1002/cne.901640404. PMID   1206128. S2CID   14288196.
  10. ↑ Young SR, Rubel EW (1983). "Frequency-specific projections of individual neurons in chick brainstem auditory nuclei". J Neurosci. 3 (7): 1373–8. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.03-07-01373.1983. PMC   6564442 . PMID   6864252.
  11. ↑ Overholt EM, Rubel EW, Hyson RL (1992). "A circuit for coding interaural time differences in the chick brainstem". J Neurosci. 12 (5): 1698–708. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.12-05-01698.1992. PMC   6575867 . PMID   1578264.
  12. ↑ Born DE, Rubel EW (1985). "Afferent influences on brain stem auditory nuclei of the chicken: neuron number and size following cochlea removal". J Comp Neurol. 231 (4): 435–45. doi:10.1002/cne.902310403. PMID   3968247. S2CID   8087908.
  13. ↑ Hashisaki GT, Rubel EW (1989). "Effects of unilateral cochlea removal on anteroventral cochlear nucleus neurons in developing gerbils". J Comp Neurol. 283 (4): 5–73. doi:10.1002/cne.902830402. PMID   2745749. S2CID   24876401.
  14. ↑ Cruz RM, Lambert PR, Rubel EW (1987). "Light microscopic evidence of hair cell regeneration after gentamicin toxicity in chick cochlea". Arch Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. 113 (10): 1058–62. doi:10.1001/archotol.1987.01860100036017. PMID   3620125.
  15. ↑ Ryals BM, Rubel EW (1988). "Hair cell regeneration after acoustic trauma in adult Coturnix quail". Science. 240 (4860): 1774–6. Bibcode:1988Sci...240.1774R. doi:10.1126/science.3381101. PMID   3381101.
  16. ↑ Cotanche DA (1987). "Regeneration of hair cell stereociliary bundles in the chick cochlea following severe acoustic trauma". Hear Res. 30 (2–3): 181–95. doi:10.1016/0378-5955(87)90135-3. PMID   3680064. S2CID   4700764.
  17. ↑ Corwin JT, Cotanche DA (1988). "Regeneration of sensory hair cells after acoustic trauma". Science. 240 (4860): 1772–4. Bibcode:1988Sci...240.1772C. doi:10.1126/science.3381100. PMID   3381100.
  18. ↑ Rubel EW, Furrer SA, Stone JS (2013). "A brief history of hair cell regeneration research and speculations on the future". Hear Res. 297: 42–51. doi:10.1016/j.heares.2012.12.014. PMC   3657556 . PMID   23321648.
  19. ↑ Wang, Shirley S. (5 August 2009). "Can a Tiny Fish Save Your Ears?". Wall Street Journal. wsj.com. Retrieved October 22, 2021.
  20. ↑ Harris JA, Cheng AG, Cunningham LL, MacDonald G, Raible DW, Rubel EW (2003). "Neomycin-induced hair cell death and rapid regeneration in the lateral line of zebrafish (Danio rerio)". J Assoc Res Otolaryngol. 4 (2): 219–34. doi:10.1007/s10162-002-3022-x. PMC   3202713 . PMID   12943374.
  21. ↑ Owens KN, Santos F, Roberts B, Linbo T, Coffin AB, Knisely AJ, Simon JA, Rubel EW, Raible DW (2008). "Identification of genetic and chemical modulators of zebrafish mechanosensory hair cell death". PLOS Genet. 4 (2): e1000020. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1000020 . PMC   2265478 . PMID   18454195.
  22. ↑ Chowdhury S, Owens KN, Herr RJ, Jiang Q, Chen X, Johnson G, Groppi VE, Raible DW, Rubel EW, Simon JA (2018). "Phenotypic Optimization of Urea-Thiophene Carboxamides To Yield Potent, Well Tolerated, and Orally Active Protective Agents against Aminoglycoside-Induced Hearing Loss". J Med Chem. 61 (1): 84–97. doi:10.1021/acs.jmedchem.7b00932. PMC   5889090 . PMID   28992413.
  23. ↑ "Oricula Therapeutics Gets FDA Clearance for Clinical Trials with Investigational New Drug". Hearing News Watch. 2018-02-07. Retrieved 2021-10-27.
  24. ↑ "Edwin Rubel wins otolaryngology association's highest award". washington.edu. Retrieved October 22, 2021.
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