Dr Kristin Barry is a research fellow at the University of Western Australia, with her career keenly focused on investigating the changes that occur in the brain after traumatic sound exposure. Kristin was drawn to this area of research by her fascination with the phenomenon of phantom limb perception. When reading that tinnitus occurs as a similar phantom perception but for hearing, she chose student research projects in this area, and has never abated in her pursuit of understanding how the brain perceives sensory input.
Kristin is currently ten years deep into an academic research career as an auditory neuroscientist. The big result from her PhD research was finding that regions of the brain thought to have no involvement in hearing are functionally connected to auditory areas of the brain, and despite having no clear involvement with hearing, the connections between these disparate regions can be damaged after exposure to loud noise trauma. This connectivity has served as a possible therapeutic target for the treatment of hearing loss and tinnitus.
She has also investigated drug, biomedical implants, and the use of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation in the treatment of hearing loss and tinnitus. Kristin also frequently drags her students to accompany her on vital bubble tea runs that help fuel her research.
