Tanvi Thakkar

I received my B.S. in Psychology and Neuroscience from the University of Maryland-College Park in 2011 and my Ph.D. in Communication Sciences and Disorders of University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2019. My work in field of auditory research has been to understand the sensory perception of interaural time differences and apply this knowledge towards constructing better outcomes for patients with bilateral cochlear implants. Interaural time differences (ITDs) are acoustic cues which enable normal-hearing listeners to navigate in noisy environments and locate sounds in the horizontal plane. Patients with bilateral cochlear implants (BiCIs) have limited sensitivity to these cues, which explains why they experience difficulties locating sound sources, particularly in noise. These difficulties stem largely from a limitation in conveying of the fine timing of ITDs in the clinical devices. The objective of my dissertation was to investigate the impact of a low stimulus rate on binaural sensitivity, lateralization, and auditory object formation of ITDs.

I am now a postdoctoral research fellow in the Binaural Hearing and Speech lab where I continue work on improving binaural cues for bilateral patients, however I am also working on projects involving: a portable bilateral research device, the CCi-Mobile, listening effort in patients with single-sided deafness, and consonant-confusion of rhyming words in children.