Fine-Tuning the Signal: Harley Wheeler’s NIH Fellowship Unlocks New Frontiers in Cochlear Implants and Speech Prosody
“ARE you going tomorrow?”
“Are YOU going tomorrow?”
“Are you going TOMORROW?”
If in your head you can hear the different ways this sentence might be spoken and the different meanings each might have, you’re imagining prosody.
Prosody refers to the rhythm, pitch, and intonation of speech, which convey emotions, emphasis, and meaning beyond the words themselves. As graduate student Harley Wheeler explains, “It’s not what you say, it's how you say it….There's a lot of things we do by changing our tone, our inflection, the pitch in our voice.”
People who use cochlear implants or other auditory prostheses lose much of the ability to hear those tones, inflections, and pitches. Wheeler explains, “They might not hear emphasis in the way a talker intended, and even if they get the right word, it tends to be not as strong of a perception” as the prosthesis’ electrical signals bypass damaged parts of the ear and go directly to the auditory nerve. “The little tilt that we make with our voice at the end of a sentence to let someone know that we’re asking a question might be difficult to pick up on for someone with a cochlear implant.”
Wheeler’s research is focusing on ways to improve prosody for people using auditory prostheses.
“You can just imagine a child talking with their peers, and the other kids in class are joking around, and they can't hear the cues that tell someone with typical hearing that it was a joke. And that makes them just be a little more socially ostracized,” he says. “These things add up when you're different from your peers and you can't interact with them in the same way.”
Since prosody perception by people using cochlear implants is an understudied area of research—Wheeler notes that fewer than 2% of speech perception studies on people with hearing loss in recent years have included any measure of prosody—he has his work cut out for him. “As far as medical technology is concerned, this is all pretty new, which means that there's a small community, and there's a million problems to solve,” he says.
An NIH Grant Fuels Possibilities
To start making a difference, it helps to have some funding. Wheeler received a prestigious F-32 fellowship grant from the National Institute of Health to continue his research. Awarded to fewer than 1,200 postdoctoral researchers per year, Wheeler worked hard to build his case for the funding.
“It’s very competitive,” he says. “You need to prove that this is going to be a worthwhile project with meaningful results.” Grant applications require detailed information about the research intent and expected outcome, what the funds go toward, and how it is clinically relevant. In the end, Wheeler explains, “Having financial support helps us to carry [the study] all the way through.”
The money from the grant will help Wheeler extend his participant pool and therefore improve the quality of research, while also giving him the opportunity to share his findings at conferences with the scientific community to make big-picture changes to the understanding of the topic.
A Supportive Faculty
Of course, a crucial part of a graduate student’s experience is working with faculty advisors. Matt Winn, Wheeler’s faculty advisor and an associate professor in the department, was especially impactful in his decision to choose the University of Minnesota.
“Having a good advisor when you're doing a PhD is the most meaningful thing. If they support you, then your performance and your trajectory can be great,” he says. “Matt was a lot of my motivation for coming here.”
Other faculty members have also played a key role in Wheeler’s success in obtaining the grant and in his research. “Andrew Oxenham in the psychology department does some fantastic research on pitch perception in listeners with normal hearing and cochlear implants. He's one of the foremost people in the world on pitch perception work. Peggy Nelson has been a big part of the Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences. With her background as an audiologist and researcher, Peggy helps really keep us grounded against patient experience and lifestyles of individuals with hearing loss and helps to amplify those voices quite a bit.”
Importance of Progress
Wheeler’s work continues with the goal of pushing for better communication for people who use cochlear implants.
Wheeler’s goal is to raise awareness that communication is about more than just understanding words; it's about grasping the nuances of tone and emotion. While the work of testing each study participant is interesting, he finds that it’s also meaningful, “because helping people with cochlear implants interact with others and share connections is what communication really all boils down to.”
This story was written by Emma Ritter, an undergraduate student in CLA.
