THE SCHWARZ LAB
Through the laboratories of Dr. Schwarz the Division of Otolaryngology maintained an internationally recognized research facility for exploring the central auditory pathways from 1983 to 2007.
In 1963, as medical student at the University of Freiburg, Dr. Schwarz applied for a doctoral thesis project in R. Jung’s famous Institute of Clinical Neurophysiology. Dietrich Schwarz turned to the ingenious acting head, H.H. Kornhuber who teamed him up with a brilliant young Canadian ENT fellow by the name of John M. Fredrickson, coming to Freiburg from the University of Chicago. Their collaboration for the next two years was decisive for his career. They discovered that signals from joint/muscle receptors, indicating that there is no isolated vestibular sense, but rather, a perception of complex body equilibrium. By the time Dietrich had finished his medical training and internship, John had established a fine laboratory at the University of Toronto, where he joined him in 1969. Dietrich soon had his own laboratory right next to John’s and they worked together for 14 years on various vestibular topics with a variety of young scientists and physicians from several European countries, the US and Canada. Their first paper (in Science) was on vestibular cortex. With Lüder Deecke and Christer Liedgren, they defined the vestibular thalamus. The thalamus work lead to a sabbatical leave to the Max Planck Institute, Frankfurt, where he studied vestibular fine structure with the thalamus pope of the time, Rolf Hassler. One of Toronto’s attractions was its proximity to Buffalo, NY, where Sir John C. Eccles, the Nobel Laureate, adopted Dr. Schwarz into his laboratory to work on reticulo-cerebellar systems with Roger Nicoll. In spring 1983, he joined the UBC Surgery Department as Research Director in Otolaryngology. This position had been created by the Pacific Otolaryngology Foundation under the presidency of Quentin Jacks and the imaginative leadership of Patrick Doyle, Professor and Head of Otolaryngology at the time, with critical support from the Rotary Hearing Foundation. Pat Doyle had just pioneered the first generation of cochlear implants in his clinic and they worked on auditory coding, as founding members of the Canadian Cochlear Implant Program. The code necessary for speech perception was under study in various centers, studying coding for musical pitch. A clinical collaboration led to an identification of musical coding requirements for human implants. In the lab, they further studied auditory pathways and neuron membrane biophysics, and worked on developing a new EEG test for binaural hearing that objectively measures, for the first time in humans, a sensory signal generated in the brain. Dr. Schwarz retired in 2007 and remains a Professor Emeritus for the Division of Otolaryngology at UBC.
Through the laboratories of Dr. Schwarz the Division of Otolaryngology maintained an internationally recognized research facility for exploring the central auditory pathways from 1983 to 2007.
In 1963, as medical student at the University of Freiburg, Dr. Schwarz applied for a doctoral thesis project in R. Jung’s famous Institute of Clinical Neurophysiology. Dietrich Schwarz turned to the ingenious acting head, H.H. Kornhuber who teamed him up with a brilliant young Canadian ENT fellow by the name of John M. Fredrickson, coming to Freiburg from the University of Chicago. Their collaboration for the next two years was decisive for his career. They discovered that signals from joint/muscle receptors, indicating that there is no isolated vestibular sense, but rather, a perception of complex body equilibrium. By the time Dietrich had finished his medical training and internship, John had established a fine laboratory at the University of Toronto, where he joined him in 1969. Dietrich soon had his own laboratory right next to John’s and they worked together for 14 years on various vestibular topics with a variety of young scientists and physicians from several European countries, the US and Canada. Their first paper (in Science) was on vestibular cortex. With Lüder Deecke and Christer Liedgren, they defined the vestibular thalamus. The thalamus work lead to a sabbatical leave to the Max Planck Institute, Frankfurt, where he studied vestibular fine structure with the thalamus pope of the time, Rolf Hassler. One of Toronto’s attractions was its proximity to Buffalo, NY, where Sir John C. Eccles, the Nobel Laureate, adopted Dr. Schwarz into his laboratory to work on reticulo-cerebellar systems with Roger Nicoll. In spring 1983, he joined the UBC Surgery Department as Research Director in Otolaryngology. This position had been created by the Pacific Otolaryngology Foundation under the presidency of Quentin Jacks and the imaginative leadership of Patrick Doyle, Professor and Head of Otolaryngology at the time, with critical support from the Rotary Hearing Foundation. Pat Doyle had just pioneered the first generation of cochlear implants in his clinic and they worked on auditory coding, as founding members of the Canadian Cochlear Implant Program. The code necessary for speech perception was under study in various centers, studying coding for musical pitch. A clinical collaboration led to an identification of musical coding requirements for human implants. In the lab, they further studied auditory pathways and neuron membrane biophysics, and worked on developing a new EEG test for binaural hearing that objectively measures, for the first time in humans, a sensory signal generated in the brain. Dr. Schwarz retired in 2007 and remains a Professor Emeritus for the Division of Otolaryngology at UBC.