Centanni GAPP Lab

I know we’ve been quiet lately, but we’ve been busy cooking up some exciting new vagus nerve stimulation studies!

First up- we are now recruiting for a study investigating non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation for adults with age related hearing loss and difficulty hearing in noise. Please share with folks and reach out if you have questions or are interested!

[email protected]

Happening next Tuesday Oct 7th!

We’re excited to have Elizabeth Norton join us to discuss fluency and the neuroscience that informs our understanding of how the reading brain functions—and how we can support it effectively.

Register here: https://ow.ly/lasU50WZyAb

Some nice coverage of our recent DoD grant!

PHHP team receives grant to study speech perception in veterans with traumatic brain injury » College of Public Health & Health Professions » University of Florida The study will investigate the impact of TBI on the brain’s ability to understand speech in noise and whether non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation can improve it.

We are excited to welcome our new lab tech, Mike DellaFera, to the group!

After many weeks of delays, we are so relieved and excited to share that we just received NOA on a 2-year DoD project to investigate neural correlates of speech in noise deficits in veterans with TBI, and explore non-invasive vagus nerve stim as an intervention. 🍾🎉

Dr Centanni was honored to be invited to close out an amazing symposium on white matter tracts, led by two fantastic early career women scientists. What a beautiful place to share and think about science!

Exciting to see our work highlighted! Can’t wait to share the results of our ongoing work in new populations :)

Vagus nerve stimulation is touted as a potential treatment for a wide range of conditions from inflammatory bowel disease to autism spectrum disorder. But does it really work? MBI researchers weigh in.

“I would never say that an approach is magical or a panacea, but I do see promise in vagus nerve stimulation for its ability to help with a lot of different things,” said Dr. Tracy Centanni.

Learn more: bit.ly/3FTsEkm

We are honored to have received an Aging in Place pilot grant from the UF College of Public Health and Health Professions!! With co-Is Drs Emily Gaines and Eric Porges, we will investigate auricular vagus nerve stimulation on hearing in noise and the neural correlates of the intervention.

Celebrating the 2025 Awardees of the Aging in Place Funding Initiative » College of Public Health & Health Professions » University of Florida Aging in place is a high priority for Floridians, yet nearly 40% of older adults have at least one disability, creating challenges for independent living. Mobility-related disabilities are among the most common types, including difficulties with walking, climbing stairs, or performing other physical...

Congratulations to lab PhD student, Delaney Kelemen, on the publication of her first first-author paper in JSLHR! She found that young adults with dyslexia performed worse than their typically developing peers on both simple and complex pitch perception tasks, though musical experiences were linked to improved performance. Her findings suggest that deficits in simple pitch discrimination may interfere with complex auditory category learning, contributing to speech sound categorization challenges in dyslexia. See the full paper here:

Complex Pitch Perception Deficits in Dyslexia Persist Regardless of Previous Musical Experiences Purpose: Pitch perception is important for speech sound learning, and reading acquisition requires integration of speech sounds and written lette...

Lab PhD student Delaney Kelemen closed out UF College of Public Health and Health Professions PHHP Days with a great talk on her work on pitch perception in dyslexia. Her paper on this work was recently accepted at JSLHR!

Day 1 of UF College of Public Health and Health Professions

Lab Honors students Sabrina Carrillo and Riley Boerger presented their research and did an amazing job! So proud of them both.

The lab is at the Cade Museum today, showcasing our portable EEG system and doing demos of brain waves as part of the museums’s community brain day!