Spring Break
It's all in the genes
by Madler
Features | 3/11/08
Posted online at 2:24 AM EST on 3/11/08
The walls of Arthur Wingfield's office, a balance of brain paraphernalia and pictures of his family and friends, are a testament to the professor's multifaceted personality.
Before I even have the chance to begin asking Wingfield about his work, he slips his business card, Houdini-like, into my palm. With an illuminating smile, Wingfield says, "The first thing you do before asking any questions is to have a firm idea of who you're talking to."
Last November, Prof. Wingfield (PSYC) published the results of an enlightening twin study that demonstrated the significance of genetic inheritance in hearing loss that occurs during late middle age.
The results of Wingfield's experiment suggest that differences in hearing acuity of late middle-aged people can be attributed to genetic factors.
This research confirms the importance of genetic factors in age-associated hearing loss and the need for vulnerable individuals and their families to take extra care to prevent further hearing damage, Wingfield said in an article published November 14th in Bio-Medicine, an online science magazine.
Wingfield also said in the article that this research implies that middle-aged and older people with a genetic predisposition to hearing loss should avoid environmental risk factors, such as harmful noise and medications with side effects that could potentially damage hearing.
Wingfield collaborated with psychiatric researchers across the United States to examine hearing loss in monozygotic (identical) and dizygotic (fraternal) twins. The results of the study-conducted as part of the Viet Nam Era Twin Study of Aging-were published in the Journal of Gerentology, in an article titled "A Twin Study of Genetic Contributions to Hearing Acuity in Late Middle Age."
Wingfield is the director of the Volen National Center for Complex Systems, funded by the National Institute of Aging. Although he is on sabbatical this semester while working at the Center for Functional Neuroimaging at the University of Pennsylvania, the endearingly eccentric scientist also runs the Memory and Cognition Lab at Brandeis, where neuroscientists are currently running two separate studies on prosody (the study of nonverbal cues to language such as voice intonation and the melody of speech that helps humans comprehend language easier) in the right hemisphere of stroke patients and pupil dilation during attentive listening.
Before I even have the chance to begin asking Wingfield about his work, he slips his business card, Houdini-like, into my palm. With an illuminating smile, Wingfield says, "The first thing you do before asking any questions is to have a firm idea of who you're talking to."
Last November, Prof. Wingfield (PSYC) published the results of an enlightening twin study that demonstrated the significance of genetic inheritance in hearing loss that occurs during late middle age.
The results of Wingfield's experiment suggest that differences in hearing acuity of late middle-aged people can be attributed to genetic factors.
This research confirms the importance of genetic factors in age-associated hearing loss and the need for vulnerable individuals and their families to take extra care to prevent further hearing damage, Wingfield said in an article published November 14th in Bio-Medicine, an online science magazine.
Wingfield also said in the article that this research implies that middle-aged and older people with a genetic predisposition to hearing loss should avoid environmental risk factors, such as harmful noise and medications with side effects that could potentially damage hearing.
Wingfield collaborated with psychiatric researchers across the United States to examine hearing loss in monozygotic (identical) and dizygotic (fraternal) twins. The results of the study-conducted as part of the Viet Nam Era Twin Study of Aging-were published in the Journal of Gerentology, in an article titled "A Twin Study of Genetic Contributions to Hearing Acuity in Late Middle Age."
Wingfield is the director of the Volen National Center for Complex Systems, funded by the National Institute of Aging. Although he is on sabbatical this semester while working at the Center for Functional Neuroimaging at the University of Pennsylvania, the endearingly eccentric scientist also runs the Memory and Cognition Lab at Brandeis, where neuroscientists are currently running two separate studies on prosody (the study of nonverbal cues to language such as voice intonation and the melody of speech that helps humans comprehend language easier) in the right hemisphere of stroke patients and pupil dilation during attentive listening.
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