The findings suggest that blast injuries cause excessive activation of PARP1, which disrupts the brain’s natural ability to manage stress and inflammation. This reduces the activity of sirtuins, which help regulate cell repair and stress responses.
Beyond Words: The Impact of Cognitive Load on Children’s Sentence Comprehension
These findings support the idea that comprehension challenges can stem from cognitive limitations besides language structure. For educators and clinicians, this suggests that sentence comprehension measures can provide insights into children’s cognitive strengths and areas that need support.
Meet the 2025 Emerging Research Grants Scientists
Lower Frequencies Boost Ability of Older Adults to Separate Sounds
These findings mean lower-frequency sounds may help older adults better understand complex sound environments. This may be useful for designing better hearing aids or other devices to help older people hear more clearly.
Changes in the Brain with Age and Hearing Loss
A better understanding of how our brains process patterns with aging and hearing loss, and when neural responses are exaggerated versus diminished, can aid in developing treatments and devices to improve age- and hearing loss-related hearing difficulties.
Meet the 2024 Emerging Research Grants Scientists
As of this year, our general hearing health grants have been renamed Elizabeth M. Keithley, Ph.D. Early Stage Investigator Awards in recognition of Keithley’s impact on the field and long service to HHF, and the awards’ focus on supporting the next generation.
Brain Targets for Hearing Recovery After Noise-Induced Hearing Loss
Our results hold the promise to advance understanding of the cortical mechanisms underlying disorders associated with maladaptive cortical plasticity after peripheral damage, such as tinnitus, hyperacusis, and difficulty hearing in noisy environments.
Potential Therapy for Blast-Induced Hearing Loss and Tinnitus
These findings suggest that by inhibiting PARP1, a protein, it may be possible to maintain the health and survival of hair cells following blast injuries. The restoration of energy production from both mitochondria and glycolysis contributes to this protective effect.
Brain Connectivity Patterns in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder
Individuals with autism spectrum disorder had different patterns of brain connectivity between areas involved in speech processing, particularly in the parietal region, which is important for combining different sounds into speech objects.
A Method to Measure Neuroplasticity Found to Be Unreliable
We found that tetanization does not produce reliable changes in brain activity. Some studies report increased brain activity, some report decreased brain activity, and still others report no changes in brain activity following tetanization.