Email: tim.griffiths@ncl.ac.uk

Research profile and key clinical specialties

My research defines bases for auditory scene analysis including working memory for sounds and separating acoustic figures from noisy background. This is a key deficit in 50% of the population that develops hearing loss and a range of common developmental, acquired and degenerative disorders.

The work is funded by the Wellcome Trust and NIH and carried out by researchers under my direct supervision at Newcastle University, UCL and Iowa University.

Work using a primate model establishes homologies between the macaque and human systems using fMRI before collaborative neurophysiological work to define neuronal mechanisms.

Work to define the normal human system is based on psychophysics and the development of novel stimuli (Newcastle), functional imaging with MEG and fMRI (UCL), and direct recordings from the cortex of neurosurgical patients (with Howard in Iowa).

Modelling work on human and macaque electrical data defines precise systems for auditory scene analysis based on the causal networks and the effective connectivity between them.

Work on patients with hearing loss in Iowa who use hearing aids or cochlear implants addresses how central mechanisms for scene analysis allow patients to adapt to hearing loss.

This new work is carried out as a PI in the large programme run by Ganz, and involves behavioural testing, EEG and functional imaging using PET.

The outcome of the new programme will be understanding of critical brain systems for the analysis of auditory scenes and the development of clinical measures of this process that goes wrong in both peripheral hearing disorder and brain disorder.

I am a practicing clinical neurologist and run the Cognitive Neurology Service in Newcastle.

Two key publications

• Kumar S, Tansley-Hancock O, Sedley W, Winston JS, Callaghan MF, Allen M, Cope TE, Gander PE, Bamiou DE, Griffiths TD. The brain basis for misophonia. Current Biology 27, 527- 533 (2017). [PMID 281628953]Discovery of basis for a new disorder of auditory emotional analysis (149 related news stories)
• Sedley W, Gander PE, Kumar S, Oya H, Kovach CK, Nourski KV, Kawasaki H, Howard MA, 3rd,  Griffiths TD. Intracranial mapping of a cortical tinnitus system using residual inhibition. Current Biology 25, 1208-1214 (2015). [PMID 25913402]
• Discovery of bases for tinnitus using direct electrical recordings from the human brain.

Possible PhD projects

Exact title to be decided soon.

More information

Visit my staff profile.

Keywords: Auditory, acoustic, degenerative, neurophysiological, psychophysics, hearing, aids, cochlear, implants, neurology, Tim, Griffiths, Newcastle

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