Gerald R. Popelka

Administrative Appointments

• Chief of Audiology, OHNS, Stanford (2005 - present)
• Member of Executive Board, Johnson Center for Pregnancy and Neonatal Services, Lucile Packard Children's Hospital (2008 - present)

Honors and Awards

• Certificate of Appreciation for Founding JARO, Association for Research in Otolaryngology (2007)
• Special Citation, Association for Research in Otolaryngology (2000)
• Silver Certificate, Acoustical Society of America (1997)
• Knud Terkildsen Research Fellowship, University of Copenhagen (1992)
• Fellow, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (1987)

Professional Education

Graduate & Fellowship Program Affiliations

• Biomechanical Engineering
• Neonatology and Developmental Biology
• Pediatric Otolaryngology
• Bioengineering

Industry Relationships

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Research Interests

My overall research effort centers on increasing our understanding of auditory function in the developing human neonate. This effort is driven by the critical role audition plays in the normal development of language and speech and the need to optimize all interventions for pre-lingual hearing loss including hearing aids and cochlear implants. Human auditory development differs significantly from that of most other organisms necessitating innovative experiments be carried out directly on newborns in well baby, special care and intensive care nurseries. Measurement systems must be non-invasive, integrated, very small and insensitive to the many forms of ambient acoustic and electrical noise found in these environments, yet remain precise and repeatable. Under a series of carefully controlled experiments I recently showed that the auditory system undergoes systematic and repeatable neural maturation during the first two days after birth, both across subjects and in individual neonates. This effect clearly is associated with neural development at the level of the brainstem because the experimental approach allowed control of maturational effects associated with other auditory structures such as the external ear, the middle ear and the cochlea, non-auditory developmental factors such as birth weight, gestational age, and general health of the neonate, and a variety of exogenous variables such as exposure to maternal anesthetic at delivery. This early auditory neural maturation may be associated with apoptosis (programmed cell death) or dendritic pruning. My current research involves understanding the relationship between auditory function and exposure to bilirubin, a molecule that results from the normal catabolism of maternal senescent red blood cells and a potential detriment to normal auditory development. Significant bilirubin exposure is experienced by 60% of well babies and much higher percentages in the remaining neonates. This molecule is known to permanently affect...

Publications

• Sleep MRI: novel technique to identify airway obstruction in obstructive sleep apnea. Barrera JE, Holbrook AB, Santos J, Popelka GR. Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. 2009; 140 (3): 423-5
• Middle-Ear Function At High Frequencies Quantified With Advanced Bone Conduction Measures. Popelka GR, Telukuntla G, Puria S. Hear Res. 2009
• Preliminary Evaluation of a Novel Bone-Conduction Device for Single-Sided Deafness. Popelka GR, Derebery J, Blevins NH, Murray M, Moore BC, Sweetow RW, Wu B, Katsis M. Otol Neurotol. 2009
• Hearing Impairment Popelka, GR, Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, McGraw Hill. 2007
• Single breath CO measurements normalized to 5% CO2 in Coombs’ test positive neonates Rolf R Engel, Gerald R Popelka. Physiological Measurement. 2007; 28 (9): 977-988