Hearing Impairment News

June 1, 2024

Top Headlines

AI-Powered Headphones Filter Only Unwanted Noise

May 16, 2024 — Noise-canceling headphones automatically identify background sounds and cancel them out for much-needed peace and quiet. However, typical noise-canceling fails to distinguish between unwanted background sounds and crucial information, leaving ...

AI Headphones Let Wearer Listen to a Single Person in a Crowd, by Looking at Them Just Once

May 24, 2024 — Engineers have developed an artificial intelligence system that lets someone wearing headphones look at a person speaking for three to five seconds to 'enroll' them. The system then plays just the ...

What Factors Predict When Older Adults Will Stop Driving?

May 22, 2024 — What factors lead older adults to stop driving? A new study followed older adults who had no memory or thinking problems to examine this ...

Why Getting in Touch With Our 'Gerbil Brain' Could Help Machines Listen Better

May 7, 2024 — Researchers have debunked a 75-year-old theory about how humans determine where sounds are coming from, and it could unlock the secret to creating a next generation of more adaptable and efficient ...

Latest Headlines

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Infants Hear Significantly More Speech Than Music at Home

May 30, 2024 — A new study has compared the amount of music and speech that children hear in infancy. Results showed that infants hear more spoken language than music, with the gap widening as the babies get ...

Participants of Pioneering CRISPR Gene Editing Trial See Vision Improve

May 6, 2024 — About 79% of clinical trial participants experienced measurable improvement after receiving experimental, CRISPR-based gene editing that is designed to fix a rare form of blindness, according to a ...

The Sense of Smell Is Influenced by Cues from Other Senses

Apr. 5, 2024 — The sense of smell is highly influenced by the cues from other senses, while the sense of sight and hearing are affected to a much lesser extent, shows a new ...

Hearing Study: Each Nerve Fiber Trains on It's Own

Mar. 6, 2024 — Axons that are regularly stimulated do not pass on increases in performance to their neighbors, study on mice ...

Factors Associated With Age-Related Hearing Loss Differ Between Males and Females

Mar. 6, 2024 — Certain factors associated with developing age-related hearing loss differ by sex, including weight, smoking behavior, and hormone exposure, ...

Can They Hear You Now? Kids Increasingly Exposed to Noise Health Risks Via Earbuds and Headphones

Feb. 26, 2024 — While it's not surprising to spot teens wearing headphones and earbuds, it's also becoming a widespread trend among younger children, a national poll ...

Scientists Discover Biological Mechanism of Hearing Loss Caused by Loud Noise -- And Find a Way to Prevent It

Feb. 12, 2024 — Drugs that trap excess zinc in the inner ear could help restore lost hearing or, if administered before an expected loud sound exposure, can protect ...

How Emotions Affect Word Retrieval in People With Aphasia

Feb. 8, 2024 — People with aphasia have more trouble coming up with words they want to use when they're prompted by images and words that carry negative emotional meaning, new research ...

Gene Therapy Restores Hearing in Children With Hereditary Deafness

Jan. 24, 2024 — A novel gene therapy for hearing loss was administered to six children in China in a clinical trial. Each child had an inherited deafness caused by mutations in the OTOF gene, called DFNB9. The ...

Retinal Imaging and Genetics Data Used to Predict Future Disease Risk

Jan. 24, 2024 — In a new study, researchers combined OCT retinal imaging, genetics and big data to estimate how likely a person is to develop eye and systemic diseases in the future. They found significant ...

Bacterial Meningitis Injures One in Three Children for Life

Jan. 19, 2024 — One in three children who suffer from bacterial meningitis live with permanent neurological disabilities due to the ...

'Smart Glove' Can Boost Hand Mobility of Stroke Patients

Jan. 16, 2024 — This month, a group of stroke survivors in British Columbia will test a new technology designed to aid their recovery, and ultimately restore use of their limbs and hands. Participants will wear a ...

Could a Drug Prevent Hearing Loss from Loud Music and Aging?

Jan. 8, 2024 — A person's hearing can be damaged by loud noise, aging and even certain medications, with little recourse beyond a hearing aid or cochlear ...

Hearing Loss Increases the Risk of Dementia

Jan. 5, 2024 — In a new study featuring data from 573,088 people, researchers have found a link between hearing loss and the development of dementia. The study is the largest of its kind to ...

Hearing Aids May Help People Live Longer

Jan. 4, 2024 — A new study shows that adults with hearing loss who regularly used hearing aids had a 24% lower risk of mortality than those who never wore ...

Chronic Childhood Ear Infections Delay Language Development

Jan. 3, 2024 — The temporary, repeated hearing loss caused by chronic ear infections can affect language skills years ...

Risk of Young-Onset Dementia Could Be Reduced Through Targeting Health and Lifestyle Factors

Dec. 27, 2023 — Researchers have identified a wide range of risk factors for young-onset dementia. The findings challenge the notion that genetics are the sole cause of the condition, laying the groundwork for new ...

Deep Neural Networks Show Promise as Models of Human Hearing

Dec. 13, 2023 — In the largest study yet of deep neural networks trained to perform auditory tasks, researchers found most of these models generate internal representations that share properties of representations ...

Loss of Auditory Nerve Fibers Uncovered in Individuals With Tinnitus

Nov. 30, 2023 — Researchers have uncovered that tinnitus, an incurable persistent ringing or other sounds in the ears, might result from underlying auditory nerve damage that can't be detected on conventional ...

Your Eyes Talk to Your Ears. Scientists Know What They're Saying

Nov. 22, 2023 — Scientists can now pinpoint where someone is looking just by listening to their ears. Following a discovery that the ears emit subtle sounds when the eyes move, a new report finds that decoding the ...

Hearing Loss Is Associated With Subtle Changes in the Brain

Nov. 21, 2023 — A team of researchers employed hearing tests and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to determine whether hearing impairment is associated with differences in specific brain regions and affects dementia ...

New AI Noise-Canceling Headphone Technology Lets Wearers Pick Which Sounds They Hear

Nov. 9, 2023 — Researchers have developed deep-learning algorithms that let users pick which sounds filter through their headphones in real time. Either through voice commands or a smartphone app, headphone wearers ...

Researchers Examine the Relationship Between Loneliness and Being Alone

Nov. 1, 2023 — A new study finds that solitary time does not closely correlate with feelings of loneliness -- unless a person spends 75% of their time ...

New Findings Pave the Way for Hearing Loss Therapies

Oct. 5, 2023 — As we age, many of us will eventually need hearing aids. In some cases, the reason for this may be a signaling pathway that controls auditory sensory cell function and is downregulated with ...

Language Recognition Is as Much About Brains as It Is About Hearing

Oct. 3, 2023 — Researchers have learned the efficiency by which people recognize spoken words depends as much on the mind as on hearing ability. In a new study, the researchers examined how well adults across the ...

Researchers Develop New Method for Mapping the Auditory Pathway

Sep. 12, 2023 — Researchers have developed a non-invasive method for mapping the human auditory pathway, which could potentially be used as a tool to help clinicians decide the best surgical strategy for patients ...

Knowledge of Building Blocks of Words Plays an Important Role When Deaf Children Learn to Read, Analysis Shows

Aug. 23, 2023 — An understanding of how words can be broken down into smaller units of meaning plays a key role when deaf and hard of hearing children learn to read, analysis ...

Hard-of-Hearing Music Fans Prefer a Different Sound

Aug. 22, 2023 — Researchers study the impact of hearing loss on subjects' enjoyment of different music mixes. They played different music mixes to listeners with and without hearing loss and found that those ...

Brain Recordings Capture Musicality of Speech -- With Help from Pink Floyd

Aug. 15, 2023 — For those with neurological or developmental disorders compromising speech, brain machine interfaces could help them communicate. But today's interfaces are slow and, from electrodes placed on ...

Mouse Studies Tune Into Hearing Regeneration

Aug. 14, 2023 — A deafened adult cannot recover the ability to hear, because the sensory hearing cells of the inner ear don't regenerate after damage. In two new studies scientists explain why this is the case ...