Research

Research within the reConnect Institute is organized into 7 main themes, which meet 4 objectives:

  • Bringing together the stakeholders of hearing health

  • Intensifying innovation and entrepreneurship

  • Moving from compensatory medicine to restorative medicine

  • Meeting the medical, societal, educational requirements raised by hearing and speech disorders

Our workpackages

Workpackage 1

New treatments and management of sudden and fluctuating hearing loss

Our goal is to use comprehensive clinical and biological assessments of sudden and fluctuating hearing loss cases treated at ENT emergency departments in the Ile-de-France region to identify biomarkers of the underlying pathologies (traumatic, inflammatory, microvascular, pressure-related, etc.) in order to target appropriate therapies.

Workpackage 2

Preventing and treating progressive hearing loss

The WP2 develops innovative care pathways addressing the variable effectiveness of prosthetic treatments for sensorineural hearing loss.

To achieve this, they encompass various approaches of gene therapy, pharmacological treatments, optogenetic cochlear implants, molecular biomarker diagnostics, and robot-based surgery.

Workpackage 3

Solutions for auditory perception disorders

Functional hearing disorders (tinnitus, hyperacusis and misophonia) are common and often disabling. Their pathophysiological mechanisms are poorly understood, and their treatment unsatisfactory. WP3 improves understanding of their causes, diagnosis and treatment.

Workpackage 4

Hearing and dementia: from disease mechanisms to treatment

Hearing and auditory dysfunctions in dementia have been overlooked although progressive hearing loss stands out as the first potentially modifiable risk factor of this condition. WP4 proposes to characterize the role of hearing in dementia in order to improve prevention, diagnosis, and treatment.

Workpackage 5

Rewiring audio-phonological networks in speech disorders

WP5 deploys evidence-based therapy for disorders of the audio-phonological loop in 5 areas: neuroplasticity in acquired deafness, phonemic representations in dyslexia, synchronization of speech reception in autism, syllabification in stuttering, restoring speech communication with BCI.

Workpackage 6

Network and data science for auditory research

This workpackage develop new technologies for the diagnosis and treatment of hearing impairments through AI and data science.

This includes developing AI tools for precision audiology, advanced image for disease detection, surgical planning, algorithms for speech production and auditory perception, and signal processing for hearing aids.

Workpackage 7

Connected Research and Medicine (CoReMed)

This platform provides access to connected devices for research and clinical practices within reConnect.

It develops digital tools for multimodal data collection to ensure effective diagnosis and therapeutic intervention with strict data security.