Spanning the Gaps: Miller School Neurosensory Disorder Lab Works Across Medical Specialties
Summary
- The Miller School’s Acquired Neurosensory Disorder Research and Treatment Lab specializes in neurosensory and vestibular disorders that span multiple medical specialties.
- The ANDRTL takes a circular approach to its work, which ranges from basic bench science all the way to clinical trials.
- The lab sprung from Dr. Michael Hoffer’s work on traumatic brain injuries, but he and colleague Dr. Erin Williams envision the lab’s work impacting a wide range of conditions, including potentially migraine, Alzheimer’s, mild cognitive impairment and autism.
Some neurosensory disorders, like hearing loss and impaired vision, are associated with obvious specialists and clear treatment pathways. Others, like tinnitus and dizziness, straddle disciplines, often leaving sufferers unsure about how to find appropriate treatments.
With its unique interdisciplinary focus, the Acquired Neurosensory Disorder Research and Treatment Lab (ANDRTL) at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine specializes in neurosensory and vestibular disorders that don’t always fit neatly into a specific field.
“A lot of neurosensory conditions span gaps, and we can give attention to those issues because we have the ability to be broad, to go from otolaryngology to neurology to physical therapy and beyond,” said Michael Hoffer, M.D., a clinician and professor of otolaryngology-head and neck surgery and neurological surgery at the Miller School and co-director of the ANDRTL.
With a broad focus on sports injury, neurosensory and vestibular assessment, treatment devices and novel therapeutics, the ANDRTL includes experts in otolaryngology, audiology, biomedical engineering, neurology, neuropsychology and physical therapy.
“We have a lot of interdisciplinary collaborations, and that makes our lab unusual in some respects. We’re trying to solve problems by figuring things out together,” Dr. Hoffer said.
From Bench Science to Clinical Trials
The ANDRTL grew out of Dr. Hoffer’s work studying traumatic brain injury (TBI) caused by everything from blasts and blunt force to toxins. Funded by entities as diverse as the Department of Defense and the NFL, Dr. Hoffer is especially well known for his work on the mysterious neurosensory disorder colloquially known as “Havana syndrome.”
With the addition of co-director Erin Williams, Ph.D., a newly minted biomedical engineering Ph.D. and senior research associate in Dr. Hoffer’s department, the lab “really took off,” Dr. Hoffer said.
“With Dr. Williams and I working together, we were able to generate a great deal of funding to study the set of problems underlying various acquired neurosensory disorders, either diagnosing and treating those disorders or studying new disorders,” he said. ”Now that she’ll be joining the faculty and helping to direct this lab, the work will continue to grow.”
The range of disciplines represented in the ANDRTL allows it to take a circular approach to its work, which ranges from basic bench science all the way to clinical trials.
“Sometimes we ask a question on the clinical side and we answer it in our basic science preclinical lab. And sometimes we develop something in the lab and bring it to the clinical lab to study,” said Dr. Hoffer.
Engineering for Healing
The lab recently used its interdisciplinary expertise to develop a new series of tests for semicircular canal function using a device called a rotational chair, used for balance testing. ANDRTL researchers modified the chair to quantitatively assess function of the anterior and posterior ear canals, a feat previously not possible with standard clinical tests.
“Especially in the earlier phases, we were trying to figure out what was going to be viable, and we did a lot of serious engineering on the front end, a lot of instrumentation development,” said Dr. Williams.
The modified rotational chair is currently in the clinical trials pipeline and will eventually be made available for clinical use.
Other projects involve device validation. One upcoming study tests a technique called passive neurosensory reintegration training (PNRT) to test a protocol for patients with TBI. In this technique, a patient lays passively on a moving table watching a light box that displays various color wavelengths over the course of a 12-day period.
The healing demonstrated with PNRT has been remarkable.
“To generate a higher-level cortical process like that required during physical or vestibular therapy, you have to go through all these more primitive pathways first. If you’ve had a traumatic brain injury, this passive technology can help you heal at that primitive level to make other therapies more effective,” said Dr. Williams.
While PNRT has been tested on only a small number of patients with TBI, Dr. Williams suspects that its uses could become much more wide-ranging.
“I see so many avenues where this technology could go, not just for our Havana syndrome cohort, but for chronic migraine, Alzheimer’s, mild cognitive impairment and autism,” Dr. Williams said. “That’s why having our research under the umbrella of a lab makes sense, because we’re not restricted by the boundary of any particular department.”
Tags: Acquired Neurosensory Disorder Research and Treatment Center, Department of Neurological Surgery, Department of Neurology, Department of Otolaryngology, Dr. Erin Williams, Dr. Michael Hoffer, Havana Syndrome, neurological surgery, neurology, Newsroom, otolaryngology, USNWR ENT, USNWR ENT 2026