Roland Schaette, PhD

Associate Professor of Computational Auditory Neuroscience        
UCL Ear Institute, London, England

Dr. Schaette has been working at the UCL Ear Institute since 2008. Before joining the Ear Institute, Roland did his PhD in Theoretical Biophysics at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin under the supervision of Richard Kempter.

The main goal of his research is to understand how hearing loss affects neuronal processing in the auditory system, with two main research topics (one could also call them the real-world applications of the basic research interest): how hearing loss could lead to the development of tinnitus and how hearing loss impairs the understanding speech in noise.

His work on computational models of tinnitus has provided a framework for understanding how neuronal activity stabilization after hearing loss could lead to increased neuronal response gain and neuronal hyperactivity, which could underlie the development of tinnitus. Together with David McAlpine, he was one of the first to investigate hidden hearing loss in tinnitus patients with a normal audiogram.