Charles Limb is an associate professor in the Johns Hopkins Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, where he specializes in neurotology and skull base surgery. He is also a faculty member at the Peabody Conservatory of Music and School of Education of Johns Hopkins University. Throughout his career, he has combined his interests in auditory science, clinical treatment of hearing loss and complex sound perception, especially music.
His current areas of clinical care focus on the treatment of hearing loss and auditory disorders. In particular, he specializes in all surgery of the temporal bone, with particular expertise in acoustic neuroma surgery, cochlear implant surgery, implantable hearing aids, stapes surgery, cholesteatoma surgery, and cancers of the ear.
His current areas of research focus on the study of the neural basis of creativity (in various musical and other art forms) as well as the study of music perception in deaf individuals with cochlear implants. He is the editor-in-chief of Trends in Amplification, the only journal explicitly focused on auditory amplification devices and hearing aids, and an editorial board member of the journals Otology and Neurotology and Music and Medicine.
His work has been featured by National Public Radio, TED, National Geographic, the New York Times, PBS, CNN, Scientific American, the British Broadcasting Company, the Smithsonian Institute, the Library of Congress, Canadian Broadcasting Company, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the American Museum of Natural History.
Dr. Limb received his undergraduate degree at Harvard University and his medical training at Yale University School of Medicine, followed by surgical residency and fellowship in Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Center for Hearing Sciences at Johns Hopkins with Dr. David Ryugo studying the development of the auditory brainstem, and a second postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health studying neural mechanisms of musical improvisation, and production and perception of music using functional neuroimaging methods.
Watch & Listen:
What Does a Creative Brain Look Like? (NPR/TED Radio Hour, October 3, 2014)
Building the Musical Muscle (TED Talk, filmed October 2011)
Your Brain on Improv (TED Talk, filmed November 2010)