Dr Anusha Yasoda-Mohan, GBHI and School of Psychology

She notes that her diverse interests were a driving force for her research. “I grew up in a time, especially in India, where there was a cultural prominence to being a doctor or engineer. It was either one or the other, and I wondered why I couldn’t have both.” Training in biomedical engineering enabled her to embrace a multidisciplinary approach, as she worked in areas such as anatomy and computer science, engineering and ethics. This led her to auditory neuroscience, working on the recording of brain signals or EEGs (electroencephalograms).

Yasoda-Mohan’s background as a trained dancer has also led to her current roles: “a lot of my childhood and college days I was very actively performing, touring, stage dancing. And I missed that with my academic training.” As well as being funded by the Irish Research Council to investigate the mechanism of action of tinnitus at the GBHI, Yasoda-Mohan is one half of Brain FM, a multi-sensory didactic workshop which employs dance in its exploration of cognition and sensory awareness.

Creating Awareness with the Global Brain Health Institute

GBHI is an ideal fit for Yasoda-Mohan’s research.  As one of seven Atlantic Institutes addressing different issues of equity, the researchers in GBHI are not just academics. “There are clinicians, musicians, policy makers. Each of our fellows brings their own professional signature to their role.”

When addressing brain health, GBHI creates awareness, so that “every stakeholder in society takes accountability.” Rather than placing all the expectations on clinicians or researchers to treat currently untreatable neurodegenerative diseases, they believe every member of society plays a role. GBHI’s filmmaker, for example, is currently pitching a story about – and including input from – people with dementia. GBHI, then, is changing the narrative around neurodegenerative diseases across society.

Tinnitus research and Brain FM, then, both explore the physiological and psychological effects that noise has on the brain: how this affects memory, mood, and overall well-being. When considering her interest in tinnitus, she explains, “You hear a sound when there’s no sound in the environment. There’s no psychiatric condition, that’s what fascinated me.” It’s a field which requires the input of many branches: neuroscientists are exploring how the brain is involved; engineers creating hearing implants; psychologists imagining how to approach to the brain.

Tinnitus as a Dimensional Disorder – Research with the School of Psychology

What is Yasoda-Mohan’s specific role in tinnitus research? While working in the neuromodulation clinic Brai3n Ghent, she realised how much trial and error goes into treating tinnitus. There is so much heterogeneity that it is very hard for clinicians to make a confident suggestion. “We realised maybe it’s more complicated, maybe it’s on a spectrum.”

Yasoda-Mohan believes that tinnitus should instead be treated as a dimensional disorder. There are many variables that contribute to it, such as head, neck, or brain injuries, sleep loss and other daily stressors. 80-90% of the tinnitus community have hearing loss. Indeed, there are so many variables that the EU COST project, which explored different types of tinnitus, found that delineation was not possible. This, then, is where the concept of dimensionality comes in. Her research team has been inspired by psychiatry which addresses spectrums of mental health. Different factors like stress, hearing loss and age all contribute to an overall profile of tinnitus as a form of cognitive impairment.

Yasoda-Mohan’s research to this point has been to understand why some people develop tinnitus: “are there specific neuromarkers that can show what the sound looks like in the brain?” She wants to see the possibilities of an objective marker, one that could tell us how patients are experiencing their tinnitus. Adhering to GBHI’s values, this work centres the patient’s voice, informing clinicians what approaches work.

There’s talk about developing a tinnitus fingerprint, perhaps via an app, based on behavioural measures, such as sleep, distress levels, hearing loss. Yasoda-Mohan would like to add a neuromarker as part of this fingerprint: “Each person could come in and get a scan or an EEG. Then we’d have a machine learning algorithm that could unlock your tinnitus fingerprint, to inform the clinician who to refer you to: an audiologist, neurologist, psychiatrist, prescribe medication or social intervention in a community setting.”

Tinnitus Research Initiative & Global Tinnitus Research

Currently, tinnitus research is a small field in Ireland. This must be addressed: to give a salient example. when the Irish medical device manufacturer Neuromod was recruiting for clinical trials in tinnitus, 5000 people signed up for their initial assessment.

Yasoda-Mohan is making the connections to establish a wider field in Ireland as Academy Director for the Tinnitus Research Initiative (TRI) conference, that took place in Dublin this June. The theme was “Bridging AIMS” (Academia, Industry, Medicine & Society): they invited researchers, clinicians, patient organisations, and entrepreneurs to participate. “Tinnitus research is quite young compared to dementia or psychiatry studies” Yasoda-Mohan explains, “so we are learning from more established disciplines.” Europe is still the centre of tinnitus studies but it is becoming more global, and the TRI conference is key in gathering together currently disparate research groups and pushing for larger consortiums.

The conference featured a lecture dedicated to Yasoda-Mohan’s late colleague, Prof. Dr. Aage Møller, world-renowned innovator in the fields of neurological monitoring, sensory systems and neuroplasticity, who sadly passed away last year. Yasoda-Mohan details the fascinating four generations of mentorship that has supported her throughout her career. Her own PhD and post-doc supervisor, Prof. Dr. Sven Vanneste, neuroscientist and Head of Psychology at Trinity, was supervised by Prof. Dr. Dirk De Ridder, a world-renowned neurosurgeon in the University of Otago, New Zealand. He himself was supervised by Prof. Møller.

As well as learning from them, she has worked alongside all three. She reflects on these experiences as she is now a supervisor. She sees her own relationship with Dr Vanneste as one she wants “to model with my students: think strategically, placing them in specific places, introducing them to the right networks. Sven is an entrepreneur too. He is very futuristic in his thinking, which is very important for career building and mentorship in academia.”

Creative Learning with Brain FM

Another key relationship is her collaboration with teaching artist and creative-ageing advocate Magda Kaczmarska, with whom she has established Brain FM. As they were unable to meet face-to-face for eight months due to Covid restrictions, Creative Brain Week 2022 was both the first time they met in person as well as their first in-person workshop: a true testament to their collaborative abilities! Brain FM combines Yasoda-Mohan and Kaczmarska’s shared passions for science and dance. Together, they uphold GBHI’s values of openness, fairness, respect and empathy.

What is Brain FM? It is, according to Yasoda-Mohan, “a fun session where you come and dance and learn about the brain.” When you dance, she explains, “you bring in that whole body integration of the content.” As a researcher, she is “interested in why we remember better when we learn with movement.”

Yasoda-Mohan and Kaczmarska have brought Brain FM to various groups since their “incubation spot” in 2021 at European Researchers’ Night. Yasoda-Mohan highlights that START’s Research Strategy Officer, Dr Jennifer Daly, gave them their first opportunity to explore brainwaves in two online sessions of 180 school children. They’ve now worked with people with dementia, professionals who attended Creative Brain Week, and groups in community centres, thanks to the support of their creative partners GBHI, START, Creative Ageing, and Prof. Brian Lawlor.

While currently an extracurricular activity, Yasoda-Mohan envisages that Brain FM could be brought into the classroom to reinforce learning through the creative arts. “The idea is to give agency to students. We’re here to facilitate a learning experience that challenges the conventional way of learning. Is it possible to create an inclusive classroom?” She also envisions BrainFM in a community setting that can help build awareness about research thereby helping people make better healthcare decisions for themselves and the people they care for.

Time and again, Yasoda-Mohan’s research highlights how combining disparate research fields can lead to paradigm shifts, inviting us to reconsider approaches to cognition. Her multidisciplinary approach, alongside her collaborations across academia and wider society, all embrace the multi-faceted and holistic exploration of brain health as championed by GBHI and the School of Psychology.

- Article written by Dr Sarah Cullen