Anat Lubetzky, Ph.D.

Meet the Researcher

Lubetzky received her doctorate in rehabilitation science from the University of Washington. She is an assistant professor in New York University’s physical therapy department. Her 2019 Emerging Research Grant was generously supported by donors to Hearing Health Foundation.

Sensory integration for balance was a main focus of my clinical and Ph.D. work, and I have done several studies in the field examining what happens when vision and somatosensory (joint position) information is altered. When my team and I first developed our assessment paradigm, we were excited to utilize head-mounted, virtual-reality displays to literally expand our view of balance and better understand visual dependence.

A year into testing patients with vestibular disorders, Maura Cosetti, M.D., the director of the Cochlear Implant Center at Mount Sinai’s New York Eye and Ear Infirmary, asked me about the relationship between what we hear and the control of balance. This was fascinating to me and she became the co-investigator on this project.

We are investigating several mechanistic questions: Does hearing loss independently lead to balance problems in some individuals? Why? Why do some people with vestibular loss improve with rehabilitation while others do not? Resolving these questions will have important implications for balance and hearing screenings and interventions.

I was a child with a microphone in my hand dreaming of being a singer on Broadway. I gradually transitioned from singing to dancing, dancing to sports injuries, injuries to the amazing world of physical therapy—and that was when my scientific curiosity kicked in. I loved working with patients and helping people feel better, but I kept questioning each and every technique—why are we doing things the way we do? Is there a better way?

My plan B (should the Broadway plan not work out) was to become a teacher. I taught my dolls, I led Scouts, I was a fitness instructor, I taught anatomy, I instructed physical therapists. I am happy that teaching will forever be a big part of my life. One of the most powerful moments as a teacher was when I first taught discoveries from my own research.

My friends and colleagues call me a “triple A person.” I don’t typically relax and I am an exercise addict. I wake up every day at 5 a.m. to work out, no matter what—exercise is medicine. My outside hobby is definitely Harry Potter! My husband, son (age 8), daughter (age 6), and I have read all the books together, and the four of us can play “Hogwarts Battle” for hours and hours every weekend.

Anat Lubetzky, Ph.D., is funded by donors to Hearing Health Foundation who designated their gifts for the most promising research. These projects address the full range of hearing and balance science.

Click to download a PDF of Dr. Lubetzky’s Meet the Researcher profile.

The Research

New York University
A balancing act in hearing and vestibular loss: assessing auditory contribution to multisensory integration for postural control in an immersive virtual environment

Humans are surrounded by sensory information and need to select the most reliable ones in order to maintain balance and disregard input that might make us fall. This is called “weighting” and “reweighting” of sensory inputs. This project uses a virtual reality, head-mounted display (HMD) application to test balance with varying sensory cues, including visual, somatosensory, and auditory. With this application, an individual’s ability to weight and reweight visual and auditory information based on their head and eye movement and their postural sway can be identified. This method has been successfully used in prior studies to test responses to visual changes. The novelty of this project includes: the addition of auditory cues scaled to well-established visual cues; the measurement of head movement via the HMD; and the portability, simplicity, and affordability of the HMD system, which increases the likelihood of future clinical translation of this assessment. In this current pilot study, 12 individuals with unilateral sensorineural hearing loss will be compared with 12 individuals with unilateral peripheral vestibular hypofunction and with 24 healthy controls. Wearing the HMD, they will go through a series of postural tasks with several combinations of visual and auditory cues of two intensity levels while standing on either a stable floor (all somatosensory cues available) or a compliant foam (to reduce somatosensory input). Their postural sway and head movement responses to the stimuli will be calculated, and gaze patterns among the groups will be compared, along with exploring whether changes in eye position can explain changes in head movement. 

Long-term goal: To answer the following: whether a complete audiometric evaluation should be part of standard balance screening; should auditory cues be included in balance assessment and fall prevention programs; and whether rehabilitation of hearing loss improves balance. This line of research is significant for those with hearing loss because recently it has been suggested that balance impairment is an important, yet poorly recognized, implication of hearing loss and that individuals with hearing loss are at higher risk for falls.