The leaves are down and the turkey has been carved. You’re getting ready
to put up the holiday decorations and, in many parts of the country,
that means throwing on a hat and gloves to accomplish outdoor chores. It
also means protecting your hearing aids
as colder weather and the loud sounds emitted by equipment of the
season make it necessary for you to take a few extra precautions. Read more about some tips on how to protect your hearing aids during the winter season.
The popularity of personal music devices like iPods and other MP3 players and their lack of sound-limiting controls has an ear specialist concerned. These devices, when combined with attached ear buds and headphones, can generate sound levels up to 115 decibels, well above the highest level of 85 decibels recommended by most hearing experts. Read more in this article about the recommendations and what things to do to protect your hearing.
Cochlear implants have restored basic hearing to some 220,000 deaf people, yet a microphone and related electronics must be worn outside the head, raising reliability issues, preventing patients from swimming and creating social stigma.
Earlier this year, a University of Utah engineer and colleagues in Ohio developed a tiny prototype microphone that can be implanted in the middle ear to avoid such problems. The proof-of-concept device has been successfully tested in the ear canals of four cadavers, the researchers report in a study just published online in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers journal Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.
A team of MIT chip designers and surgeons has devised a tool to ascertain the underlying causes behind auditory loss. The tool uses the ear’s own biological battery as the power source. The chip-in-the-ear may also lead to the development of an infection-free cochlear implant and eventually a drug delivery tool in the vicinity of the ear.
Roughly 36 million Americans are hearing-impaired or deaf. Researchers at Purdue University reported their findings from a study in animals that found almost no difference in quiet settings between the sound processing ability of chinchill
as with or without damage in the cochlea — the part of the inner ear that transforms sound into electrical messages to the brain.
But when they listened to the same tones in noisy settings, there were distinct differences in the way sound pulses were coded into the brain through different channels for various frequencies. In effect, the noisy setting threw off the ability of neurons in the cochlea to synchronize with the sound receiving channels in the brain, leaving the sounds more scattered and fuzzy because a limited number of healthy neurons are trying to focus on too many sound sources. Find out more about the results of this research and the possible implications.
A webinar hosted by the Association of University Centers on Disabilities: “Western Adventures in Audiology: LEND Pediatric Audiology Training Program Webinar Series #2” will be held on Thursday, December 13, 2012 from 12:00 – 1:30 pm EST. This webinar will include feature presentations from trainees within two LEND pediatric audiology programs.
Funded through the Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB), the MCHB/AUCD LEND Pediatric Audiology Training Program supports 10 LEND programs to increase the didactic content and clinical experience of trainees in pediatric audiology. This webinar series has been organized to enable LEND trainees to present their perspective on pediatric audiology and the interdisciplinary LEND experience. Be sure not to miss out on this webinar! For more information and to register, please follow this link.
The Division of Services for Children with Special Health Needs of the Maternal and Child Health Bureau will have it’s monthly Webinar Series held on Tuesday, November 27, 2012 – 3:00 pm Eastern Time.
The Division of Services for Children with Special Health Need
s (DSCSHN) of the Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB) has started a monthly webinar series of the Division’s National Centers. This series was started by the Division to promote the work of the National Centers to MCHB’s grantees. These Centers provide resources for comprehensive, community-based, family-centered, culturally competent, coordinated systems of care for children and youth with special health needs and their families Baby’s First Test will be the next National Center to present. Baby’s First Test is the nation’s educational resource center for newborn screening. This webinar is relevant to supporting partnerships among EHDI programs and other national centers involved in building coordinated service systems.
The Center for Education Research Partnerships at Rochester Institute of Technology’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf has received a $2.3-million research grant from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.
The four-year project, “Language, Learning, and Cognition among Deaf Students with and without Cochlear Implants,” is aimed at understanding the complex interactions among language, learning and cognitive abilities of deaf students with cochlear implants. The grant will support eight studies that include measures of academic achievement, social-emotional functioning, cognitive abilities, English skills and deaf students’ language and cochlear implant histories.
The results will help to better focus services for deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals, making them more efficient and effective, while enhancing educational and employment opportunities as well as physical and emotional health.
A study aims to provide guidance in the implementation of hearing screening in the rural areas of China. 11,568 babies born in five counties of Hubei Province of China were screened with transient evoked otoacoustic emissions (TEOAEs). Infa
nts tested after the second-stage screening, were tested by diagnostic auditory brainstem response (ABR).
This large-scale newborn-hearing screening in rural areas of Hubei demonstrated that the screening rate and referral rate for high-risk infants is low in rural areas in China. The researchers suggest that urgent measures should be taken by the government to promote newborn hearing screening in the rural areas.
Naturally, our brain activity waxes and wanes. When listening, this oscillation synchronizes to the sounds we are hearing. Researchers have found that this influences the way we listen. Hearing abilities also oscillate and depend on the exa
ct timing of one’s brain rhythms. Researchers claim that this discovery of sound, brain, and behavior being intimately coupled could help in learning more about listening abilities in hearing loss.