Andrej Kral

Andrej Kral (born 1969) is a German / Slovak neuroscientist and director of the Institute of AudioNeuroTechnology at the Hannover Medical School. He is one of the pioneers of research on plasticity, development and critical (sensitive) periods of the deaf auditory system. He postulated the theory that following deafness in early childhood, the connections between auditory areas in the cerebral cortex, as well as the connections between auditory system and other brain parts become functionally weaker ('decoupling theory'). Prosthetic therapy of hearing disorders is a further focus of his work.

Life

Andrej Kral was born in Bratislava, Slovakia. After studies of human medicine at the Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia (MD 1993 PhD 1998)^[1] he joined the Institute of Pathophysiology at the School of Medicine, Comenius University. In 1995 he received a DAAD scholarship and moved to Frankfurt am Main, Germany, to work on neurophysiology of cochlear implants and deafness in the labs of Prof. Rainer Klinke, School of Medicine, J.W.Goethe University. An appointment to Associate Professor of Physiology followed in 2002 and in 2004 he moved to the University of Hamburg, becoming Professor of Neurophysiology at the University Clinics Hamburg-Eppendorf. There, he was deputy director of the Institute of Neurophysiology. In the same year he has also been appointed Adjunct Professor of Cognition and Neuroscience at The University of Texas at Dallas, USA. Since 2009 A. Kral has been chair and Professor of Auditory Neuroscience,^[2] director of Dept. of Experimental Otology, scientific director of the ENT Clinics and head of the Institute of AudioNeuroTechnology,^[3] Medical University Hannover. The institute investigates technological and neuroscientific aspects of neuroprosthetic devices with main focus on auditory prostheses.

Work

Kral's group published studies on developmental effects of deafness on the systems level and first studies that described neural correlates of sensitive periods in development and plasticity of the deaf auditory system.^[4] The work demonstrated a developmental delay in deafness and described cortical maturation with early hearing experience using cochlear implants. This work supported early cochlear implantation in children and emphasized the need for a neonatal hearing screening, now standard in many countries. Early implantation in congenitally deaf children, particularly the shift toward younger implantation ages, has been proved exceptionally successful.^[5] The results have correlates in human electrophysiological studies (by Prof. A. Sharma and Prof. J.J.Eggermont). Effects of single-sided and binaural deafness on cortical properties have shown the extensive reorganization of the brain under this condition. Further, fundamental studies on cross-modal reorganization following deafness were performed in collaboration with Drs. S.G.Lomber (University of Western Ontario, Canada), P. Barone (CERCO & University of Paul Sabatier, France) and A.K.Engel (that time Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, Frankfurt am Main).

Kral‘s lab further concentrates on functional and anatomical aspects of prosthetic therapy in hearing, variations in microanatomy of the human cochlea, reactions of cochlear tissue to prosthetic devices and different aspects of hearing loss.

Andrej Kral has been responsible for the curriculum of medical physiology, neurophysiology and auditory neuroscience at several universities. Currently, he chairs the PhD Programm Auditory Sciences at the Medical University Hannover.

Dr. Kral received funding from many prestigious funding agencies, including the Cluster of Excellence Hearing4all (German Science Society, DFG).

Notable publications

• Kral, A et al. (2013) "Brain". 
• Kral A, Sharma A (2012) "Trends Neurosci". 
• Kral A, O‘Donoghue G (2010) "New England J Med". 
• Lomber et al. (2010) "Nat Neurosci". 
• Kral et al. (2009) "J Neurosci". 
• Kral et al. (2006) "Prog Brain Res". 
• Kral et al. (2005) "Cereb Cortex". 
• Kral et al. (2002) "Cereb Cortex". 
• Klinke et al. (1999) "Science". 
• Complete publication list with links
• List of publications
• List of papers

References

External links

• Lab website
• 3SAT documentation on Kral's work (in German)
• Cluster of Excellence Hearing4all
• Publications