Anne Luebke, Ph.D., Associate Professor in Neurobiology & Anatomy and Biomedical Engineeering, and Loisa Bennetto, Ph.D., Chair of the Department of Clinical and Social Psychology, have been awarded a collaborative pilot grant to study whether physiological-based biomarkers of cochlear efferent strength will be impaired in the autism spectrum disorder (ASD) population.

The specific aim of the project is to determine efferent feedback strength in children and adolescents with ASD when compared with typical controls (age, gender, and IQ matched). The project will build on existing measures of MOC strength using two different otoacoustic emission-based tests with short and sustained binaural broadband suppression to obtain maximal efferent feedback strength in both ears of all participants.