Larry Roberts obtained his PhD at the University of Minnesota in 1965 and founded the Human Neural Plasticity Laboratory in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Behavior at McMaster University (Hamilton, Ontario, Canada).  His research has investigated how experience with sound modifies the tuning of neurons in the human auditory cortex (a process called “neural plasticity”) with applications to brain development, musical skill, and deafferentation syndromes of which tinnitus is an example.   

 

From 2002-2008 Roberts was group leader of a consortium of laboratories based in Canada that used physiological, psychoacoustic, brain imaging, and computational methods to investigate the neural basis of tinnitus.  Research findings from the group supported the hypothesis (set out by Eggermont and Roberts, Trends in Neurosciences, 2004, 27:676-682) that tinnitus occurs when synchronous neural activity develops in regions of the auditory cortex that have been deprived of input from the ear by hearing loss.  Computerized tools for the measurement of tinnitus were developed to assess this hypothesis (Roberts et al., Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology, 2008, 9:417-435). 

 

In addition to his role at McMaster Dr. Roberts directed the MEG laboratory of the Down Syndrome Research Foundation in Vancouver from 2003-2008 and has held Guest Professorships at the University of Tübingen and the Humboldt University (Berlin).  In 2004 he was a faculty member in the Summer Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience at Dartmouth College (USA).  His research is supported by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the American Tinnitus Association, and the Tinnitus Research Initiative.