Archive for November, 2009

Our Skin Helps Us "Hear" Speech

A new study from Canada shows that our skin helps us hear speech by sensing the puffs of air that the speaker produces with certain sounds. The study is the first to show that when we are in conversation with another person we don’t just hear their sounds with our [...]

How Our Brains Can Fill In The Gaps To Create Continuous Sound

It is relatively common for listeners to “hear” sounds that are not really there. In fact, it is the brain’s ability to reconstruct fragmented sounds that allows us to successfully carry on a conversation in a noisy room. Now, a new study helps to explain what happens in the brain that allows us to perceive [...]

Auditory Illusion: When Sound Is Fragmented The Brain Fills In The Gaps

A new study led by scientists in The Netherlands has revealed the mechanisms through which the brain creates “auditory continuity illusion”, where a physically interrupted sound is heard as continuing through background noise; thus when we try to listen to conversation in a noisy room, the brain [...]

Maney Publishing Acquires Audiology Titles From Wiley-Blackwell

Maney Publishing is pleased to announce the purchase of two quarterly journals from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd: Cochlear Implants International and Deafness & Education International, which together establish a decisive publishing commitment to the clinical treatment and education of the deaf. The acquisition also reflects Maney’s continuing involvement and expertise [...]

New Brain Findings On Dyslexic Children

The vast majority of school-aged children can focus on the voice of a teacher amid the cacophony of the typical classroom thanks to a brain that automatically focuses on relevant, predictable and repeating auditory information, according to new research from Northwestern University.

Neural Mechanism Reveals Why Dyslexic Brain Has Trouble Distinguishing Speech From Noise

New research reveals that children with developmental dyslexia have a deficit in a brain mechanism involved in the perception of speech in a noisy environment. The study, published by Cell Press in the November 12 issue of the journal Neuron, provides the first direct evidence that the human auditory brainstem exhibits remarkable moment-to-moment plasticity and [...]

Scientists Create A ‘Golden Ear’ Mouse With Great Hearing As It Ages

What do you get when you cross a mouse with poor hearing and a mouse with even worse hearing? Ironically, a new strain of mice with “golden ears” - mice that have outstanding hearing as they age. The work by one of the world’s foremost groups in age-related hearing loss, or presbycusis, [...]

Mouse Study Sheds Light On Hearing Loss In Older Adults

Becoming “hard of hearing” is a standard but unfortunate part of aging: A syndrome called age-related hearing loss affects about 40 percent of people over 65 in the United States, and will afflict an estimated 28 million Americans by 2030.

‘Escaped’ Proteins Add To Hearing Loss In Elderly, University Of Florida Researchers Found

Age-related hearing loss is the most common sensory disorder among the elderly. But scientists are still trying to figure out what cellular processes govern or contribute to the loss. Now a University of Florida team and researchers from University of Wisconsin and three other institutions have identified a protein that [...]

Hearing Study Focuses On AIDS Patients

Specialists in HIV and in hearing at the University of Rochester Medical Center are teaming up to measure the hearing of people with AIDS. The five-year study is believed to be the first large study of its kind testing the hearing of people with HIV/AIDS and comparing the results with those [...]