Research

Cortical sensitivity to binaural amplitude-modulated sounds

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Published on 21 June 2013

Each year at the British Academy of Audiology conference, nearly 100 posters are presented about the latest research projects that have been undertaken. Prizes are awarded by a panel of judges and this year there were joint winners. The following report is from one of the winning projects that looked at cortical sensitivity.

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Pawel Jastreboff: The treatment of tinnitus and decreased sound tolerance with TRT

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Published on 20 June 2013

A subject highly relevant to tinnitus treatment, but still somehow underappreciated, as Pawel Jastreboff defined the Decreased Sound Tolerance (DST). The professor at the Department of Otolaryngology at the Emory University School of Medicine of Atlanta in USA was invited to the 7th TRI Tinnitus Conference to discourse about the role of Tinnitus Retraining Therapy (TRT) in relation with DST and tinnitus treatment, both from the point of view of hearing and clinical implications.

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Quality of Life for Youth with profound sensorineural hearing loss

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Published on 19 June 2013

Adolescence is a life stage with rapid and major developmental changes, yet little is known about how these changes influence the quality of life of young people who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH). A team lead by the Department of Otolaryngology at the University of Minnesota set out to determine differences in the three domains of a hearing-specific quality-of-life instrument

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Negative effects of suppressing tinnitus

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Published on 17 June 2013

A recent Swedish study looked at the psychological processes involved in the development of tinnitus distress by examining the costs of suppressing an emotional sound that simulated the experience of tinnitus.

Hugo Hesser has for several years studied tinnitus, and

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Speech in noise improves with age in kids

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Published on 10 June 2013

Researchers in the People’s Republic of China have found that speech perception ability in noisy environments improves with age, most notably between the ages of three and four years. The research was aimed improving early alternatives for Mandarin-speaking children with hearing impairments. The speech perception abilities

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Smoke exposure affects newborn hearing

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Published on 06 June 2013

A study from Western Michigan University has found significant cotinine level elevations in mothers who smoked more than 10 cigarettes a day during pregnancy compared to non-smoking mothers. Prenatal smoke exposure has been shown to change cochlear echo response amplitudes and auditory brainstem response (ABR) wave latencies in newborns.

“Since gene expression changes are often synchronized in different tissue types,

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How to hear when the pinna is absent

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Published on 05 June 2013

Microtia artresia is a pathology present at birth with multiple causes and which manifests itself through a malformation of the structures of the outer and middle ear. In Mexico, one of these cases appears in every six thousand newborn, and such patients are eligible for high technology treatment and cosmetic solutions.

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Princeton use 3-D Printing to create bionic ear

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Published on 03 June 2013

Get ready for the world’s first “bionic” ear: Using 3-D printing tools, scientists at Princeton University have created a functional ear that can "hear" radio frequencies far beyond the range of normal human capability. The researchers' primary purpose was to explore an efficient and versatile method of merging electronics with

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Manchester researchers breakthrough in understanding inherited deafness

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Published on 30 May 2013

A major breakthrough in the understanding of infertility problems and inherited deafness was announced by Manchester researchers last week – after they discovered a previously unknown gene.

The gene was identified by a team from Manchester Biomedical research Centre at Saint Mary’s Hospital and the University of Manchester.

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Link between autism and SSCD discovered

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Published on 23 May 2013

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are often described as being preoccupied with, or agitated by, noise. This hypersensitivity in ASD children may have a link to superior semicircular canal dehiscence syndrome (SSCD), which often causes dizziness or vertigo in patients. The aim of a study, conducted by researchers at Mansoura University in Egypt, was to evaluate the prevalence and

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