Dooling isn't interested in producing sweet songs, but rather in understanding what happens when these little creatures lose their hearing. The birds are then exposed to noise, which damages the thousands of hair cells, or sensory cells, located in the inner ear. When undamaged, these cells transmit sound through nerves to the brain. When injured, the birds become deaf and lose their ability to chirp precisely.
Dooling and his partner, Brenda Ryals at James Madison University, want to learn if hearing and speech return to normal levels once the hair cells regrow. According to their tests, birds regain their ability to produce precise vocalizations within 28 days, the amount of time that it takes for all the hair cells to regenerate.1 "From our studies, we think that with a new set of hair cells, the ability to hear is largely back, but the world sounds different than it did before," ...
