2022/01/12 | People | Artificial Intelligence
Tinnitus Research Award for Suyi Hu
For his outstanding PhD thesis on “Bayesian Brain-Inspired Computational Modeling of Tinnitus and Residual Inhibition” Dr. phil. Suyi Hu has been awarded the research price 2022 of the Swiss Tinnitus League worth CHF 2'000 on 8 January 2022. Suyi Hu investigates the potential of computer modeling to develop new quantitative strategies in tinnitus research at the Hearing Research Lab, Insel Gruppe and ARTORG Center.
Swiss Tinnitus League president, PD Dr. med. Dr. h. c. Andreas Schapowal, awarding Suyi Hu the research award 2022 in Zurich
(courtesy of STL)
The effectiveness of clinical tinnitus treatments, including acoustic therapies, varies from person to person. It is therefore important to be able to identify patient-specific tinnitus pathologies and foresee treatment success for each patient. Current methods do not yet allow such an accurate diagnosis. To improve this, Dr. Hu of the Hearing Research Lab (PD Dr. Wilhelm Wimmer) is using artificial intelligence with the goal of developing a generative computational tinnitus model that simulates the perceptual responses of individual patients to therapeutic stimuli.
His dissertation demonstrated the potential of computer modeling to quantitatively link experimental observations with theoretical hypotheses, opening a potentially new tinnitus research direction in the sense of personalized medicine, allowing for more refined subtyping and patient-specific diagnosis and individual prediction of treatment outcomes. The project was initiated by ENT Department of the Inselspital (Prof. Dr. Marco Caversaccio), Bern University Hospital, and supported by Bernafon AG.
