Sound enters the ear and travels through a complex biological pathway to reach the brain. The structure and function of that pathway determine how well someone can hear, and damage to that pathway can cause hearing loss or other auditory perceptual impairments. However, normal changes in the auditory pathway occur from birth through older adulthood. Dr. DiNino studies how biological changes across the human lifespan influence sound perception and interact with hearing impairments. In particular, she focuses on processes that support perception of speech, such as one’s ability to attend to a certain voice or perceive various acoustic cues.  

BA, Psychology, San Diego State University, 2008
MA, Cognitive Neuroscience, San Diego State University, 2010
PhD, Neuroscience, University of Washington, 2018
Postdoctoral Fellowship, Psychology / Neuroscience, Carnegie Mellon University, 2018-2022

Hearing Health Foundation Emerging Research Grant
Neural Mechanisms of Speech Sound Encoding in Older Adults
10/1/2020 – 9/30/2023

National Institutes of Health National Research Service Award Fellowship (NIH NIDCD 1F32DC018460-01)
Neural Measures of Temporal Processing Deficits Affecting Speech Comprehension in Listeners with Normal Hearing Thresholds
1/1/2020 – 10/31/2021

University of Pittsburgh Auditory and Vestibular Neuroscience Training Grant Postdoctoral Fellowship (NIH NIDCD T32DC011499)
8/1/2018 – 12/31/2019

University of Washington Auditory Neuroscience Training Grant Predoctoral Fellowship (NIH NIDCD T32DC005361)
7/1/2014 – 6/30/2017

DiNino, M., Holt, L.L., Shinn-Cunningham, B.G. (2021). Cutting through the noise: Noise-induced cochlear synaptopathy and individual differences in speech understanding among listeners with normal audiograms. Ear and Hearing, 43(1), 9-22.

DiNino, M., Arenberg, J.G., Duchen, A., Winn, M.B. (2020). Effects of age and cochlear implantation on spectrally cued speech categorization. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, 63(7), 2425-2440.

DiNino, M., O’Brien, G., Bierer, S.M., Jahn, K.N., Arenberg, J.G. (2019). The estimated electrode-neuron interface in cochlear implant listeners is different for early-implanted children and late-implanted adults. Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology, 20(3), 291-303. 

DiNino, M., Arenberg, J.G. (2018). Age-related performance on vowel identification and the spectral-temporally modulated ripple test in children with normal hearing and with cochlear implants. Trends in Hearing, 22, 1-20.

DiNino, M., Wright, R.A., Winn, M.B., Bierer, J.A. (2016). Vowel and consonant confusions from spectrally-manipulated stimuli designed to simulate poor cochlear implant electrode-neuron interfaces. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 140(6), 4404-4418.