Losing your hearing can mean losing your balance, too.
The Sensorimotor Lab at NYU studies how vision, sound, and the inner ear work together to keep us upright — and what happens to balance when hearing or the vestibular system is impaired.
Raw center-of-pressure (top) and head (bottom) traces from one representative participant, standing with and without a secondary task. Spatial variance was lower under dual-task (DT) than single-task (ST) on the left; cumulative medio-lateral path length from 5–60 seconds (right) was greater under dual-task. Axis scales differ, since overall variance was higher for the head than the COP, while path length was higher for the COP than the head.
Figure 7 from Lubetzky, Coker, Arie, Aharoni & Krasovsky (2022). Journal of Motor Behavior, 54(4), 466–479.
Raw center-of-pressure (top) and head (bottom) traces from one participant with traumatic brain injury (TBI) and one healthy control, both 54-year-old men. The scale of movement is larger for the participant with TBI under every condition shown — note the axes differ between the two columns.
Figure 3 from Humphrey, Kelly, Rosario, Keller Johnson & Lubetzky (2025). Journal of Neurologic Physical Therapy, 49(4), 222–231.
Research focus
More than a third of adults in the U.S. seek care for a vestibular disorder or hearing loss, and both can sharply raise the risk of a fall. We study why — specifically, how sound contributes to postural control, and why hearing loss so often comes with a balance problem. Using custom virtual-reality environments and head-mounted displays, we separate and recombine visual and auditory cues to see exactly how the two work together, and what happens when one of them is missing.
Ongoing projects
Three new studies move into development and recruitment starting spring 2026.
Prevent a Fall: using earbuds to monitor balance
Fitness trackers count steps and monitor heart rate — but nothing tracks something just as critical for older adults: balance. With Prof. Ken Perlin (Computer Science) and Prof. Agnieszka Roginska (Music Technology), we're building an early-alert wearable that monitors balance change over time in adults over 40, so people know when it's time to start exercises or therapy, before the first fall happens.
An example of preliminary data: velocity during a sit-to-stand task, measured simultaneously via AirPods (custom software) and a gold-standard motion capture system.
Unraveling hidden factors in fall risk and fall prevention
A pilot study with Mount Sinai Health System and the University of Pittsburgh Department of Physical Therapy, run inside a community falls clinic. We're testing the feasibility of a comprehensive, multifactorial, instrumented balance and fall-risk assessment, and gathering baseline data on physical activity and sedentary behavior among people who already attend falls clinics — looking for the risk factors that get overlooked.
A single-sensor, AI-facilitated platform to assess balance anywhere
Led by Dr. Elizabeth Coker (NYU Tisch) with Dr. Lubetzky, Dr. Rizzo, and NYU Langone Rusk, this proof-of-concept study is building a single-sensor, AI-facilitated system to assess both standard static balance tasks and dynamic, population-specific ones — sensitive to the needs of a wide range of people, and usable outside the lab.
AI-based pose estimation from a single camera, tracking body landmarks during a balance assessment.
Triaxial lumbar IMU acceleration (gravity removed) during quiet bipedal stance, eyes open.
A participant wearing the smartphone sensor during a balance task in the motion-capture studio.
The same setup, mid-task — markers on the floor guide the movement sequence.
Recently completed
Who we are
Anat Lubetzky, PT, PhD, CSCS
For over a decade, Anat has studied sensory integration for postural control and its role in normal and impaired balance. Her interdisciplinary team spans computer science, music technology, statistics, otolaryngology, physical therapy, and engineering, and has built several virtual-reality tools for assessing and rehabilitating balance problems — including work on how sound contributes to postural control, particularly for people with vestibular dysfunction or hearing loss.
Faculty profileGoogle Scholar
Tej Mehta, MS
A physical therapist with an MS in Healthspan Promotion and Rehabilitation from UIC, researching reactive balance control and cognitive-motor training in older adults.
Ansu Kuswaha
A physical therapist with a master's degree in Neuromuscular Physical Therapy who completed advanced certification in vestibular physical therapy at the University of Pittsburgh, with interests in neuroscience, balance, and vestibular rehabilitation.
Jule Kuechler, MA
A physical therapist with a master's degree in Pathokinesiology from NYU Steinhardt and clinical experience in Switzerland. Her research interests are postural control and sensory integration, with a focus on the effects of sound.
Past lab members
Brittani Morris, PT, PhD
Liraz Arie, PT, PhD
In the news
A flash talk at NYU's Transforming Human Health symposium
Dr. Lubetzky presented her vision for the lab's research at the 2025 symposium.
Read more →Featured by NYU Brain-iacs
The lab's work on sound and balance was featured in a video interview.
See the video →PLOS ONE study on sound and balance picked up by the media
Findings on the role of sound in balance disruptions for people with vestibular disorders reached a wider audience.
Read more →Publications
For the complete, up-to-date list, see the lab's public bibliography on NCBI.
Reliability of a Home-Based Smartphone Balance Assessment in Healthy Middle-Aged and Older Adults
Our newest paper, led by our longtime collaborator Elizabeth Coker, EdD (NYU Tisch, Department of Dance), asks a simple question: can people reliably test their own balance at home, on their own phone, with no one watching? Sixty-nine adults ages 41–76 used a custom iPhone app to test their balance once a week for three weeks, entirely unsupervised. Averaged across the three sessions, results were reliable and precise — especially simple side-to-side sway during quiet standing — suggesting smartphones people already own could support long-term, at-home balance monitoring.
Read the full paper (open access) →Also newly open access:
Cognitive Performance, Dizziness and Tinnitus among Adults with Unilateral Audiovestibular Disorders
This pilot study asks whether losing hearing or vestibular function in just one ear affects thinking, not only hearing or balance. Fifty-eight adults — healthy controls plus people with unilateral hearing loss, unilateral vestibular hypofunction, or Meniere's disease — completed a battery of memory and attention tests that didn't rely on hearing. People with Meniere's disease scored lower on verbal memory, and people with unilateral hearing loss struggled more with sustained attention; within the Meniere's group, worse dizziness and tinnitus tracked with worse performance across several cognitive domains.
Read the full paper (open access) →Greater Severity of Hearing Loss Is Associated with Worse Balance Performance, but Exercise May Improve Stability
This study compared standing balance in 31 adults with bilateral hearing loss to 28 adults with normal hearing, using body-worn sensors rather than a stopwatch and a pass/fail call. As a group, the two groups balanced about the same — but within the hearing-loss group, more severe hearing loss meant less steady, less smooth balance on the hardest task (eyes closed, standing on foam). Regular exercise stood out as more protective than hearing status itself: exercisers in both groups were steadier under the most challenging conditions, supporting exercise as a target for fall prevention with or without hearing loss.
Read the full paper (open access) →Collaborators
An interdisciplinary group across computer science, music technology, statistics, otolaryngology, and dance.
Ken Perlin, PhD
Founding director of the NYU Media Research Lab; Academy Award winner for procedural texturing techniques.
Daphna Harel, PhD
Applied statistician focused on psychometrics and analysis methods for health-science data.
Agnieszka Roginska, PhD
AES Fellow studying spatial and immersive audio and 3D auditory displays.
Maura Cosetti, MD
Director of the Cochlear Implant Center; board-certified in Neurotology and skull-base surgery.
Elizabeth Coker, EdD
Motor learning and control researcher, collaborating on two ongoing studies with Dr. Lubetzky.
Get involved
Whether you're weighing joining a study or joining the lab, we'd like to hear from you.
Take part in a study
We're looking for adults with vestibular hypofunction, hearing loss, or no balance/hearing conditions at all, to serve as controls, across several ongoing studies.
Join as a student or collaborator
We're an interdisciplinary group spanning physical therapy, computer science, music technology, statistics, and otolaryngology — reach out if your work touches balance, hearing, or VR.