Resource sharing in a collaborative study on cochlear synaptopathy and suprathreshold-hearing deficits

Evidence from animal models of substantial noise-induced cochlear synaptopathy even in the absence of measurable audiometric changes has led to an active debate over whether such damage occurs in humans, and whether it contributes to suprathreshold-hearing deficits. Addressing these fundamental and translational questions requires multi-disciplinary approaches that integrate widely ranging forms of data and analyses, e.g., animal/human/model, evoked/single-unit/behavioral, and lab/clinical. Furthermore, connecting results across research groups around the world working on various species requires a systematic approach to resource sharing that will promote rigor and reproducibility. Here, we describe our efforts and plans to share resources from a large-scale collaborative project on noise-induced synaptopathy that links single-unit, evoked, and behavioral data from chinchillas with evoked, behavioral, and imaging data from humans studied in the laboratory and in the clinic. In addition to using modular implementations of stimulation paradigms, computational models, and analysis tools in high-level languages, we adopt open-access resource repositories and integrated platform-independent tools for version control, distributed development, documentation, and testing. Such resource sharing will help expedite answering the question of whether the anatomical/physiological effects seen in smaller animal models are present and perceptually significant in humans.