Ross Williamson, Ph.D.

Meet the Researcher

Williamson received his doctorate from the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, University College London, followed by postdoctoral training at Massachusetts Eye and Ear, Harvard Medical School. Currently an assistant professor in the departments of otolaryngology and neurobiology at the University of Pittsburgh, Williamson is a 2020 Emerging Research Grants recipient, which was renewed for a second year in 2022.

As a postdoc, I used some viral strategies to identify the different brain areas that were targeted by a particular type of neuron. It turned out that these neurons connect with many areas simultaneously—including brain areas that regulate emotions, anxiety, and fear. Some subsequent work showed that these neurons also remained hyperactive after noise exposure, so looking at how this alters downstream connectivity seemed like an interesting next step.

I’ve always been obsessed with music. I grew up listening to the likes of Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, which naturally progressed into learning to play electric guitar. Trying to understand how guitar effects pedals worked led to a love of the mathematics behind signal processing.

I have tinnitus. The truth is it’s due to a misspent youth attending too many rock concerts. (I’m still obsessed with Phish and have seen them 50-plus times.) I’ve realized that tinnitus really affects everyone differently. I’m fortunate in that I can typically ignore my tinnitus, but many others do not have this luxury. I’m fascinated by the neural circuitry that underlies this kind of heterogeneity.

My formal academic training was largely quantitative (computer science, then theoretical neuroscience and machine learning). Because of this, whenever I get to actually experience neural data, either through hearing an electrophysiological recording or watching a two-photon imaging session, I’m always struck with this childlike wonder. I just love playing sounds to the brain and hearing/seeing it talk back to me—it’s so cool!

Outside the lab my greatest passions are music, books, and bikes. I love the tactile sensation of reading a book or setting the needle down on a vinyl record. I think that most of my profound scientific thinking occurs with a soundtrack, or while seeking out hills on my road bike.

Ultimately, I want to do good science that can make a difference. I hope that over the next decade my lab will have been able to contribute fundamental insight as to how different neural circuits process sound and how to repair these neural circuits when they go wrong.

Ross Williamson, Ph.D., is funded by donors to Hearing Health Foundation who designated their gifts for the most promising research. HHF sincerely thanks our community for supporting these projects that address the full range of hearing and balance science.

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The Research

University of Pittsburgh
Characterizing tinnitus-induced changes in auditory corticofugal networks

The irrepressible perception of sounds without an external sound source is a symptom that is present in a number of different auditory dysfunctions. It is the primary complaint of tinnitus sufferers, who report significant “ringing” in the ears, and it is one of the primary sensory symptoms present in schizophrenia sufferers who “hear voices.” Tinnitus is thought to reflect a disorder in gain: A loss of input at the periphery shifts the balance of excitation and inhibition throughout the auditory hierarchy leading to excess hyperexcitability, which then leads to the perception of phantom sounds. This project aims to quantify how such “phantom sound” signals are routed and broadcast across the entire brain and to understand how these signals impact our ability to perceive sound. Identifying improper regulation of brain-wide neural circuits in this way will provide a foundation for the development of new treatments for tinnitus and other hearing disorders. 

Long-term goal: To understand how hyperexcitable phantom sound signals are propagated and broadcast throughout the brain, and how these signals impact our ability to both perceive and utilize sensory information in the world around us; to identify how sensory processing is altered in auditory cortical circuits after peripheral insult, and to leverage this knowledge to guide the development of new treatments and therapeutic interventions for hearing disorders.