Young adults who were undernourished as preschool children were approximately twice as likely to suffer from hearing loss as their better-nourished peers, a new study suggests.
In a new international collaborative study between The Chinese University of Hong Kong and Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, researchers created a machine learning algorithm that uses brain scans to predict language ability in deaf children after they receive a cochlear implant. This study’s novel use of artificial intelligence to understand brain structure underlying language development has broad reaching implications for children with developmental challenges. It was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
Swimming, paddling, boating and fishing account for more than 90 million cases of gastrointestinal, respiratory, ear, eye and skin-related illnesses per year in the U.S. with an estimated annual cost of $2.9 billion, according to a new report by University of Illinois at Chicago researchers.This is the first time the cost associated with waterborne illnesses contracted during recreational activities in the U.
Millions of Americans hear ringing in their ears -- a condition called tinnitus -- but a new study shows an experimental device could help quiet the phantom sounds by targeting unruly nerve activity in the brain.
Results of the first animal tests and clinical trial of the approach resulted in a decrease in tinnitus loudness and improvement in tinnitus-related quality of life.
Fish sense water motion the same way humans sense sound, according to new research out of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. Researchers discovered a gene also found in humans helps zebrafish convert water motion into electrical impulses that are sent to the brain for perception. The shared gene allows zebrafish to sense water flow direction, and it also helps cells inside the human ear sense a range of sounds.
A single treatment of a genome editing agent partially preserved hearing in mice with genetic deafness. The work could one day help scientists treat certain forms of genetic hearing loss in humans.
With the help of funding from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences of the National Institutes of Health, a Wayne State University professor is researching gene-environment interactions to determine the association between environmental exposure to lead and cadmium and hearing loss in Detroit firefighters.
A new study is the first to identify a mechanism that could explain an early link between sound input and cognitive function, often called the “Mozart effect.”
Vocoded speech, or distorted speech that imitates voice transduction by a cochlear implant, is used throughout acoustic and auditory research to explore speech comprehension under various conditions. Researchers evaluated whether musicians had an advantage in understanding and reciting degraded speech as compared to nonmusicians, and they will present their work on the effect of musical experience on the ability to understand vocoded speech at the 174th ASA Meeting, Dec. 4-8, 2017.
Listening requires sensitive hearing and the ability to process information into cohesive meaning. Add everyday background noise and constant interruptions, and the ability to comprehend what is heard becomes that much more difficult. Audiology researchers at Auburn University have found that in such demanding environments, both children and adults depend more on their right ear for processing and retaining what they hear. They will present their work at the 174th ASA Meeting, Dec. 4-8.
Researchers at The University of Alabama will study how tornado warnings could be improved in their accessibility and comprehension by members of the Deaf, Blind and Deaf-Blind communities.
Infants raised in homes where they hear a single language, but spoken with different accents, recognize words dramatically differently at about 12 months of age than their age-matched peers exposed to little variation in accent, according to a University at Buffalo expert in language development.
The findings point to the importance of considering the effects of multiple accents when studying speech development and suggest that monolingual infants shouldn’t be viewed as a single group.
A common, hands-on method for teaching genetics in grade school encourages students to compare their earlobes with those of their parents: Are they attached and smoothly mesh with the jawline? Or are they detached and dangly? The answer is meant to teach students about dominant and recessive genes. Simple, right? Not so fast.
Rural counties continue to rank lowest among counties across the U.S., in terms of health outcomes. A group of national organizations including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the National 4-H Council are leading the way to close the rural health gap.
Want to restore hearing by injecting stem cells into the inner ear? Well, that can be a double-edged sword. Inner ear stem cells can be converted to auditory neurons that could reverse deafness, but the process can also make those cells divide too quickly, posing a cancer risk, according to a study led by Rutgers University–New Brunswick scientists.
Would you want a spider web inside your ear? Probably not. But if you’re able to put aside the creepy factor, new research from Binghamton University, State University of New York shows that fine fibers like spider silk actually improve the quality of microphones for hearing aids.
A research advance co-led by Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine’s Kumar Alagramam, PhD, may stop the progression of hearing loss and lead to significant preservation of hearing in people with Usher syndrome type III, a form of hereditary hearing loss linked to defects in the sensory “hair” cells in the inner ear. USH3 is caused by a mutation in the clarin-1 gene.
Researchers found mutations in a master-switch protein called Epithelial Splicing Regulatory Protein 1 in individuals with a type of congenital hearing loss. In general, what connects most of the unexplained hearing-loss cases is that protein building in the cochlea during development goes awry. The cochlea has the all-important job of transforming mechanical energy in the form of sound waves into electrical signals that run along auditory nerves to the brain.
Sound waves could be the future of biomedical research, diagnosing and treatment, says Peng Li, a chemistry professor at West Virginia University.
Li is a data analyst for an ongoing research study using an acoustic device to separate extracellular vesicles for a deeper look at their properties.
For many people with hearing challenges, trying to follow a conversation in a crowded restaurant or other noisy venue is a major struggle, even with hearing aids. Now, Mass. Eye and Ear researchers reporting in Current Biology on October 19th have some good news: time spent playing a specially designed, brain-training audiogame could help.
Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center utilized their Research to Prevent Blindness (RPB) grants to make progress in characterizing the genetic and physiologic components of Usher syndrome—the most common cause of deaf-blindness.
Patients in Queens now have access to high quality, advanced medical care for a wide range of ear, nose, and throat (ENT) conditions at Mount Sinai Doctors Queens
A National Institutes of Health-supported nationwide clinical trial will test a novel approach to combat hearing loss in children infected by a relatively unknown virus, cytomegalovirus (CMV). The University of Utah Health-led study will determine whether antiviral therapy can halt progressive hearing loss in children with a confirmed CMV infection. CMV is the leading non-genetic cause of hearing loss, contributing from 6 to 30 percent of childhood cases.
Patients with any stage of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) carry signs of the disease in their blood that may be found through special laboratory tests, according to a new study led by AMD researchers based at Massachusetts Eye and Ear.
With the development of the Clinical Practice Guideline: Evaluation of the Neck Mass in Adults, published today in Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery and presented at the AAO-HNSF 2017 Annual Meeting & OTO Experience in Chicago, IL, the appropriate testing and physical examination of an adult with a neck mass is addressed, with a specific goal to reduce delays in diagnosis of malignant disease and to optimize outcomes.
The latest research on patient preferences, quality-of-life, ear health, thyroidectomy, and other topics related to the specialty of otolaryngology will be presented in Chicago, IL, September 10-13, during the AAO-HNSF 2017 Annual Meeting & OTO Experience. The 2017 Annual Meeting includes hundreds of research presentations. All abstracts to be presented are now available online.
The Pacific University College of Health Professions held annual commencement exercises for six of its eight schools on Saturday, Aug. 12, on the Marsh Hall East Lawn at the Forest Grove Campus, highlighted by the awarding of the university's first-ever research-focused doctoral degree, a PhD, or doctor of philosophy.In all, nearly 250 students from the schools of Audiology, Dental Hygiene Studies, Graduate Psychology, Healthcare Administration and Leadership, Occupational Therapy and Physician Assistant Studies participated in the ceremony and celebrated with their families and friends.
Cognitive hearing aids that constantly monitor brain activity to determine whether a subject is conversing with a specific speaker would be very useful for the hearing impaired. Using deep neural network models, Columbia Engineering researchers have made a breakthrough in auditory attention decoding methods and are coming closer to making cognitively controlled hearing aids a reality. The study, led by Electrical Engineering Professor Nima Mesgarani, is published today in the Journal of Neural Engineering.
Mercy’s Dr. Kathryn Boling of Lutherville Personal Physicians discusses tinnitus, which is ringing in the ears that won't go away, and the different methods used to treat it.
A team of hearing experts at Duke University School of Medicine and the Duke Global Health Institute is calling for a comprehensive, worldwide initiative to combat hearing loss.
Although the basic outlines of human hearing have been known for years – sensory cells in the inner ear turn sound waves into the electrical signals that the brain understands as sound – the molecular details have remained elusive. Now, new research has identified a crucial protein in this translation process.
Take extra care this Fourth of July holiday and at all of your summer celebrations by implementing these tips and tricks to protect your ears from loud explosions.
The way you hear and interpret the sounds around you changes as you move. That’s how sound in the real world works. Now imagine if it worked that way while you were listening to a recording of a concert or playing a video game in virtual reality. During Acoustics ’17 Boston, Ivan J. Tashev and Hannes Gamper, with Microsoft’s Audio and Acoustics Research Group, will explain how they are using head related transfer functions (HRTF) to create an immersive sound environment.
An intervention at a free clinic that included comprehensive care for hearing was able to provide recycled, donated hearing aids to low-income adults, according to a study published by JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery.
It has been difficult to tell whether neural entrainment is specialized for spoken language. In a new study, University of Chicago scholars designed an experiment using sign language to answer that question.
Massachusetts Eye and Ear has received an anonymous gift totaling more than $20M to accelerate research at its Eaton-Peabody Laboratories, the world’s largest and most preeminent hearing research center. This gift represents one of the country’s largest philanthropic investments ever to advance research on hearing and hearing loss, a significant public health problem impacting one-third of the world’s population over age 65.
Researchers from the National University of Singapore have developed a novel handheld device, known as CLiKX, for the treatment of a condition called Otitis Media with Effusion, or ‘glue ear’, which is the leading cause of hearing loss and visits to the doctors among children worldwide.
The speed at which sign language users understand what others are ‘saying’ to them depends on whether the conversation partners are left- or right-handed, a new study has found.
Researchers at Indiana University School of Medicine have successfully developed a method to grow inner ear tissue from human stem cells—a finding that could lead to new platforms to model disease and new therapies for the treatment of hearing and balance disorders.
Francisco Goya is the most important Spanish artist of the 19th century. In 1793, Goya, then 46, came down with a severe, undiagnosed illness. His hearing never returned. Now, a hearing expert at the University of Maryland School of Medicine has developed a diagnosis.
Winner of the ThinkFirst Injury Prevention Award, Brian D. Sindelar, MD, presented his research, Internal Jugular Vein Compression: A Novel Approach to Mitigate Blast-induced Hearing Injury, during the 2017 American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) Annual Scientific Meeting.
Traditional clinical hearing tests often fail to diagnose patients with a common form of inner ear damage that might otherwise be detected by more challenging behavioral tests, according to the findings of a University at Buffalo-led study published in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience.
An early-stage researcher at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine is receiving a major grant to help address the problem in an innovative way.
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital scientists have regenerated immature auditory hair cells in adult mice by manipulating two genes. The research offers clues for better treatment of hearing loss.
Virginia Tech researchers have discovered that these tiny movements pack more information into ultrasound pulses the bats send and receive, helping them locate objects around them.