Translational Ear Physiology Laboratory

Thesis Submission Congratulations: Sachini Gunasekera " Identifying and Characterising the Endolymphatic Sac in the Adult Sheep " We’re excited to share another big milestone from our research group: Sachini has submitted her Master of Audiology (MAud) thesis! C ongratulations on an excellent achievement and a substantial piece of work. Sachini’s project focused on a key structure in the sheep inner ear called the endolymphatic sac (ES) , which is strongly linked to endolymphatic hydrops,  the clinical hallmark associated with Ménière’s disease.  Ménière’s disease is a debilitating condition affecting both balance and hearing. One of the major barriers to developing better treatments is that we still don’t fully understand what drives hydrops, and we also lack a definitive, reliable animal model. Sachini’s work lays important groundwork for using sheep as a large-animal model for hydrops research in the future. This could be something especially promising because sheep inne...

Congratulations, Wanya Ansari, on your MAud Thesis Submission Titled "Characterising the Microvasculature of the Rosenthal’s Canal in Sheep and Human Cochlea" We’re excited to share a big piece of good news from our research group: We’re excited to share a big piece of good news from our research group: Wanya Ansari has submitted her Master of Audiology thesis! And  it’s a seriously impressive piece of work. Wanya's thesis research Hearing loss affects around   1.5 billion people worldwide , and one of the most common forms is   sensorineural hearing loss , where damage occurs in the inner ear and/or the auditory nerve.  Inside the cochlea, sound information travels along auditory neurons called   spiral ganglion neurons.  These neurons sit inside a small bony tunnel called   Rosenthal’s canal . Like all cells, these neurons need a good   blood supply   to stay healthy. When blood flow or vessel health is disrupted, it may make the auditory n...

Thesis Submission Congratulations: Well done, Alice Yu, on your Biomedical Science thesis submission on the use of optical coherence tomography of the sheep round window! We’re delighted to celebrate another thesis submission and a major milestone from our research group: congratulations to Alice Yu on submitting her Biomedical Science thesis about Optical coherence tomography of the sheep round window . Alice’s project was jointly supervised by Haruna and Dr Cushla McGoverin (Biophotonics Lab, Physics) , and it’s fair to say this was a genuinely challenging, cross-disciplinary piece of work that she tackled with real persistence and skill!  Alice’s thesis sat right at the intersection of inner-ear biology and advanced optical imaging . She had to get comfortable with the physics foundations behind the imaging approach, the Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT). She had not only learned how to operate and troubleshoot specialised equipment to collect high-quality images, but also a...

3 March: World Hearing Day Outreach at the University of Auckland Our team organised a World Hearing Day outreach stand as part of the University of Auckland Grafton Campus Student Expo! We'd like to share the experience with you in this article.  World Hearing Day is on 3rd March every year. This normally falls in the first week of the semester. This year, it was during the orientation week and the student Expo week was happening at the same time in the atrium at the University of Auckland Grafton Campus. We were very fortunate to be able to join the Expo to have our World Hearing Day display alongside other exhibitions. The Grafton campus on 3rd March was absolutely booming with students who are just beginning their university journey and may one day become clinicians, audiologists, researchers, and other health professionals.  Our outreach stand in the Atrium of Grafton campus on the 3rd March Our goal was to raise awareness of hearing health and World Hearing Day in a way...

World Hearing Day 2026 - 3rd March!  World Hearing Day 2026 is this week - on Tuesday, 3rd of March.  Every year, we participate to raise awareness of the importance of ear care and hearing health locally. This year, we will be part of the student club expo happening on the same day, to have some presence at the University of Auckland, Grafton campus  (85 Park Avenue, Grafton, Auckland).  We will have some interactive displays, a free New Zealand sign language workshop, as well as information about World Hearing Day, and what else is happening around Aotearoa New Zealand, run by other groups working in ear health/ research/disability support sectors.  If you are around the Grafton campus of the University of Auckland, or are a student and planning to visit the student expo, please come and find us there! 

We’re delighted to share a new publication led by our TEP alumna Prakansha N. Kumar , based on research from her Master of Audiology : “Expression of the P2X1 receptor remains in the type II spiral ganglion neurons in the mature rat cochlea” ( Purinergic Signalling , Brief Report, open access; published 24 January 2026 ). Article available online:  https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11302-026-10129-7 A special congratulations to Prakansha - this project was done during her Master of Audiology thesis project , and the paper has continued steadily through the publication process after she moved on. Seeing it now published is a real credit to Prakansha's hard work from MAud, and a fantastic example of thesis work making it into the peer-reviewed literature.  From Figure 1F, Kumar et al. 2026 What the paper is about Hearing begins in the cochlea , where sound is turned into signals that travel to the brain through spiral ganglion neurons (SGNs) . Most SGNs are type I...