Faculty/Staff/PhD

Academic Faculty

walton, joseph

Walton, Joseph, Ph.D.

Professor

Phone: 813.974.6493
Office: PCD 4021B

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Dr. Walton currently holds the title of Professor in the departments of Communication Sciences & Disorders and Aging Studies, and also holds a joint appointment in Chemical and Biomedical Engineering. He is an Associate Director at the Global Center of Speech and Hearing Research a joint program of the Colleges of Behavioral & Community Sciences and Engineering. He obtained his PhD in Auditory Neuroscience, his MA in Hearing Science/Audiology and BA in Communication Sciences from the University of Florida. He was awarded a VA fellowship in Audiology which was completed at the Gainesville VA Hospital. Up until last year, Dr. Walton had been a faculty member for 25 years in the Otolaryngology & Audiology, and Neurobiology & Anatomy Departments at the University of Rochester Medical School, Rochester, New York. His research has been funded over 15 years by a National Institutes of Health Program Project Grant which studies the neural bases of age-related hearing loss. His laboratory is currently involved in three areas of study, i) identification of neurons within the auditory pathway specialized for extracting rapid acoustic events, ii) elucidating age-related changes in neural processing of complex auditory signals presented in degraded acoustic environments, and iii) neural plasticity following exposure to an enriched auditory environment in a mouse model of congenital hearing loss.

Education
Ph.D. (Auditory Physiology) University of Florida 1984
M.A. (Hearing Science/ Audiology) University of Florida 1982
B.A. (Auditory Neuroscience) University of Florida 1976

Teaching

  • SPA 6314 | Electrophysiology I
  • SPA 7931 | Advanced Medical Audiology

Recent Scholarly Activity

  • Margolis, R., Frisina, R., Walton, J. (in press) AMTAS® - Automated Method for Testing Auditory Sensitivity: III. Air Conduction Audiograms in Children and Adults. Internat. J. Audiology.
  • Polesskaya , O, Cunningham , L.L., Francis, S.P., Luebke, A.E., Zhu, X., Collins, D., Vasilyeva , O., Sahler, J., Desmet, E., Gelbard, H.A., Maggirwar, S.B., Walton, J.P. Frisina, R.D., Dewhurst, S. (submitted) Mixed lineage kinase 3 ablation does not protect from ototoxicity induced by acoustic trauma or aminoglycoside exposure. Hearing Research.
  • Walton J. P. 2010. Timing is Everything: Temporal Processing Deficits in the Aged Auditory Brainstem. Hearing Res. 264: 63-69.
  • Vasilyeva, O., Luebke, A., Walton, J. (in preparation) Central auditory temporal processing deficits in an animal model of congenital sensorineural hearing loss. Hearing Res.
  • Walton J. P., Barsz, K. B., and Wilson, W. W. (in preparation) Auditory midbrain neurons specialized for extracting silent intervals in background noise. Nature Neurosci.
  • Allen, P.D., Barsz, K., Ison, J. R., Walton. J. P. (in preparation) Age-related decline in behavioral and neural correlates of spatial release from masking in a mouse model of presbycusis. Neurobiology of Aging.
  • Vasilyeva, O., Zhu, X., Walton, J.P. and Frisina, RF. 2009 Interactions of hearing loss and Diabetes Mellitus in the CBA/CaJ mouse model of presbycusis. Hearing Res. 249:44-53.
  • Leong, U., Barsz, K., Allen, P.D. and Walton, J.P. 2009. Neural correlates of age-related declines in frequency selectivity in the auditory midbrain. (DOIin press) Neurobiology of Aging.
  • Walton, J., Wilson, W., Barsz. (2008) Sensorineural hearing loss and neural correlates of temporal acuity in the inferior colliculus of the C57Bl/6 mouse. J. Assoc. Res. Otolaryngology. 9: 12-22.
  • Allen, P.D., Schmuck N., Ison, J.R., Walton, J.P (2008) Kv1.1 potassium ion channels do not appear to play a critical role in temporal processing as assessed by gap detection measures. Hearing Res. 246: 52-58.
  • Jones, L., Prins, J., Park, S., Walton, J.P., Luebke, A. and Lurie, D. Lead exposure during development results in increased neurofilament phosphorylation, neuritic beading, and temporal processing deficits within the murine auditory brainstem. J. Comp. Neurol. 506: 1003-1017, 2007.