With a staff of over 65 scientists, physicians and engineers, the Eaton-Peabody Laboratory is one of the world's largest basic research facilities dedicated to the study of hearing and deafness.  The Laboratory is located at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary and is closely affiliated with the Harvard Department of Otology and Laryngology. Laboratory members also have academic ties with a number of other Programs and Departments at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; including the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST), the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, the Harvard Program in Neuroscience, and the HST Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology Program.

Integrative and comprehensive work in hearing and deafness requires an interdisciplinary approach.  Thus, the Eaton-Peabody Laboratory combines scientific strengths in Neuroanatomy, Physiology, Pharmacology, Electrical Engineering, Physics, Mathematics, Psychology, Molecular Biology, Chemistry, Cell Biology and Computational Biology. Progress on clinically relevant problems requires interactions between clinicians and basic scientists, and both are well represented among the group of 23 collaborating investigators.

A partial list of current research areas in the Eaton-Peabody Laboratory includes:

middle ear mechanics in animals and humans;
cochlear mechanics and the physical basis of otoacoustic emissions;
cochlear ultrastructure and neuroanatomy;
cochlear ion homeostasis and synaptic transmission;
cellular mechanisms of noise-induced and age-related hearing loss;
molecular studies of transduction, otosclerosis, and neural degeneration;
neurophysiological and neuroanatomical studies coupled with neural modeling of ascending and descending auditory pathways including auditory nerve, cochlear nucleus, inferior colliculus and the olivocochlear system;
human studies of the role of efferent control;
functional brain imaging of normal hearing listeners and tinnitus patients;

In addition to a variety of approaches to the study of cochlear implants including functional brain imaging of cortical processing, post-mortem analysis of cochlear and brainstem histopathology, and animal models of the neurophysiology of electrical stimulation.