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Blog — Hearing Health Foundation

Cochlear Implants

Hearing Loss Stigma?

By Terry Golson

Forty years ago I was a teenager with a mild hearing loss. An audiologist offered to fit me with bulky, ugly hearing aids. I said No thanks. But my loss was progressive and in my mid-twenties I finally got a hearing aid. It was a large plastic shell that filled the ear. It was uncomfortable and whistled from feedback, but it enabled me to hear. I wore it.

 

I wore my hair long and covered the aids. They were ugly and I didn’t want to have to talk about my disability unless I brought it up first.

My hearing worsened so that even with aids I struggled. I was constantly challenged in how to function with it. I wasn’t embarrassed by my loss, and I didn’t believe that people would think less of me because of it, but that didn’t lessen how difficult it was to live with a hearing loss. I’d tell people that I had trouble hearing, but it’s actually quite difficult for people to change how they speak. Some would project better for a word or two, but then resort back to their quiet voices. Early on in my loss I heard well enough to fill in the blanks. But, as my hearing declined, I couldn’t catch up. I’d miss half a sentence and nod in agreement, or I’d think that I understood something, but later would find out that I’d misheard. Also, like many people with hearing loss, it was easier to talk rather than to listen and so I would dominate a conversation, or would come across as rude because I missed the verbal clues as to when to enter and to end an interaction.

I was self-aware enough to recognize that this was happening. Eventually, I no longer cared if people saw my aids, in fact, I hoped that if they did they would speak more clearly. I wore my hair short, but no one noticed the aids. My hearing loss continued to worsen. I switched to behind-the-ear devices.  My ability to engage in conversation declined. Work options shrunk. I felt socially inept, visibly I came across as incompetent because of missed communication. Whatever judgements people were making about me, it was because of the behavior that the hearing loss caused, not what they saw in my ears.  I became even more open about my hearing loss. I discovered that once others understood what I was coping with, that they were generous and helpful. It wasn’t what was in my ears that caused any stigma – it was when people didn’t know that the aids were there!

No one thought less of me because of the devices I wore. This is truer now than ever before. Look around – most people have some sort of electronics attached to their heads. I now have cochlear implants. I still have short hair. People rarely notice them, but if they do, they don’t know what they are. Once, a stranger asked me about my “telephone.” I’ve had teenagers tell me that my CIs are really cool. The only people I’ve met who believe that there is a stigma to using hearing aids are the ones who wear them. A friend of mine has always hidden her disability because she worried that being open about it would impact on how people perceive her at her job. She’s a high-level manager at a world-renowned research lab. Recently a woman joined her team. At the first meeting this new hire announced that she wore hearing aids and there were times during communication that she would need help. No one blinked. These are people used to working with technology. They were interested and helpful. It took my friend aback. All of those years of struggling with her loss alone had been unnecessarily difficult.

I understand not wanting to show off one’s aids. I don’t want my hearing loss to be the first thing that one notices about me. Also, I’m vain enough to care that my CI’s are not beautiful. They’re the color of office furniture. But, there is hope. Another friend, Karen, recently upgraded her hearing aids to devices that are sleek and stylish. They are a vibrant blue to match her eyes. She says that her new aids are beautiful, and she’s right. Karen is 83 years old. Her hearing loss and her hearing aids have no stigma - not in her mind, and not to anyone around her. She’s a noted scientist and, because her devices enable her to stay in the hearing world, she continues to speak at conferences and is a mentor to many.

So let’s lay the idea of the stigma of wearing hearing aids to rest once and for all. It’s life without the aids that brings limitations. Now, if only my CIs were as pretty as Karen’s.

Terry Golson lives in a small town outside of Boston, Massachusetts. You can read about her work and her life at her website, HenCam.com

 

Receive updates on life-changing hearing research and resources by subscribing to HHF's free quarterly magazine and e-newsletter.

 
 
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Go for It, Live It, Experience It

By Nina Poersch

Have you ever wanted to do something so badly, fulfilling a dream, but the next minute you’re terrified? Then back to feeling like you’re ready, but then again thinking, “What have I gotten myself into?” And finally settling with: If I don’t do this now, I may never get a chance again, so you go for it.

 

That was me when I was chosen for Season 30 of the reality TV show “Survivor.”

I was not the first person with a disability on the show. But then, being deaf and a cochlear implant recipient wasn’t always who I was. I was born with typical hearing and didn’t lose it until I was 44. I call it a “gradual sudden hearing loss” that took place over the span of about five years. The doctors are not sure why I lost my hearing. All I wanted was to get my hearing back.

After two months of wearing hearing aids that were not helping, I knew I wanted cochlear implants and got one in my right ear. I am not one to sit back and wonder why something has happened to me, or to worry about the future, but instead I embraced my situation and began a journey of educating others about cochlear implants. It’s what I talk about with every new person I meet. I also volunteer for Cochlear Americas as a mentor with the company.

After the implant, I didn’t need a captioned phone anymore. I also threw away my note pad, which had become my ears for people to write on when I couldn’t understand what they were saying to me. Driving became less horrifying. It’s amazing what you hear in your everyday life that you didn’t realize you were hearing.

But all of this didn’t come easily. I struggled with my family. It took time for everyone in my life to understand that while I do use hearing technology, there are limitations to how well I hear.

For six years I only had one implant. It wasn’t until I was called for a possible chance to be on “Survivor” that I considered going bilateral. It was a definite life-changer and I still kick myself for waiting so long.

I’m not sure whether these challenges prepared me for “Survivor,” but I believe everything happens for a reason. “Survivor” is very much a social game, one that I could have mastered before I lost my hearing. Even with cochlear implants, people with hearing loss don’t always catch everything and in the game, you can’t always ask people to repeat themselves. Nighttime was especially hard because I had to take off my sound processor.

“Survivor” finished airing in May 2015. Looking back, I know that being on the show was a learning experience as well as a teaching experience.

I learned that not everyone knows how to react to someone who has hearing loss. It can make people feel uneasy and create misunderstandings. When I look in the mirror, I don’t see a person who is deaf, or a person who wears cochlear implants. People I meet don’t see that either. They just need to be taught how I hear and how to talk to me—and that it’s okay. It’s very simple and I find most people are very interested.

Playing the game gave me insight and a voice to teach people what it was like for me to lose my hearing and what it means to have a cochlear implant. The challenges on the show that I participated in were not ones that required a lot of hearing, but I felt 100 percent confident that my implants would not have failed me had I had the chance to compete in more challenges. Instead, because of a combination of reasons—my hearing loss, my age, maybe being in the wrong tribe—I was voted off on day eight.

 

“Survivor” remains one of the most amazing things I have ever done. But it’s not the only thing. The biggest lesson I have learned since losing my hearing is to never let your hearing loss hold you back. Always go for your dreams. And remember that going for your dreams doesn’t always mean that you’ll succeed, but if you don’t try then you’ve failed yourself. In the end you’ll be happy that you did and you’ll find that you’ve inspired others to go for their dreams.

My motto is “go for it, live it, experience it.” It’s how I live my life and it has never failed me.

Nina Poersch lives in California. For more, see ninapoersch.com.

Have a story like Nina's that your would like to share? If so, please email info@hhf.org

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How Can You Change the World, If You Can't Hear It?

By Zeid Malas

How many times have you nodded your head in response to someone whose words you couldn't really hear, no matter how many times they repeated themselves?

How many times have you felt complete isolation when you were among a group of people, whether it was hanging out with friends or a family dinner? Not because you were using your phone or social media, but because you couldn't really keep up with the countless conversations happening at once.

How many times did you do your best to avoid the phone, preferring to text because you were afraid you wouldn't hear the person calling or that you would miss important information being said? Do you know of the pain felt when someone you care about wants to talk to you through Skype, but you just can’t follow the conversation?

What about YouTube, music, lectures, and videos? Such as when you fail to understand what's being said because you can’t hear it and no captions are provided.

How many times have you hesitated or been afraid to ask someone to repeat himself because you felt bad for the times he needed you to listen and understand him? Or maybe because it would change how people thought of you?

I mean every word when I say "I feel you."

Age 11 after taking medicine

Age 11 after taking medicine

When I was 9 years old I woke up one morning only to realize that I had lost 99% of my hearing in both ears for no reason. It wasn't hereditary, it wasn't physiological—it just happened. What did I do? There wasn't really anything I could do... I just accepted it. I taught myself to read lips and body language in order to understand what someone would be trying to say. It was my primary way of communication and with it I was able to finish high school and reach college.

Sadly, my weakest point is electronic devices such as speakers, the TV, the phone… etc. I can hardly make any sense of what comes out of them which makes it very painful not being able to hear and understand someone when they call me. Especially when I'm an online gamer and my games sometimes require me to Skype with my group to coordinate our strategy, about which I end up being clueless.

I've dealt with hearing loss for 10 years now, until last May when I had surgery on my right ear to get a cochlear implant. I made a documentary showing my last days with hearing loss, the surgery, and finally my first moments/days after.

Even though this has been a challenge and complication in life, it made me different from the rest of my peers. It made me someone you remember, someone who my professors will mark as present without the need to shout my name, someone patient and full of empathy, someone who continually works hard to provide the best results because that’s the only way I know how to live.

At age 18

At age 18

I know many think I've been suffering because of this, and that's what I thought for a while, too. Until I realized that—weirdly enough—it's actually a blessing that I lost my hearing, for it's what made me so different from most people my age. I'm not saying I'm better, I'm just saying I don't waste time relating music to my life, making sure everyone knows what I’ve had for breakfast each day, asking everyone to share and like my profile picture on Facebook, using countless hashtags on Instagram to get followers, retweeting every celebrity tweet on Twitter, or building a story every day on Snapchat.

Because of my situation, I've learned to observe, learn, and understand solely using bodily cues, and to adapt to any difficult situation or people I may encounter. I do my best to make the best out of any situation. I'm not saying I'm Sherlock Holmes... I'm simply saying I'm Zeid Malas!

I made my disability my greatest ability... What are you going to do with yours?

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Advocacy at Work

By Kathi Mestayer

Ever had a hard time hearing in the hospital? Or visited someone who did? You're in good company. Hospitals can be very noisy, with alarms, footsteps, noise from machines, televisions, and clanging carts and food trays. For starters.

And I would argue that the hospital is one of the most important places to hear things right. The two phrases "So, are you in any pain now?" and "You know what to do if you're in any pain, now?" can sound really, really similar to a person just out of surgery and who uses a cochlear implant.

In this actual situation, the patient—my father—answered, "Yes," which meant two very different things to each party. The nurse thought "yes" meant “Yes, I know what to do if I'm in pain," but what it really meant was, "Yes, I am in pain now." Over the course of 45 minutes, after multiple attempts by the patient to get help via the intercom system to contact the nurse, and the nurse using the intercom system to ask what the problem was, it became clear that:

  1. He was now in a lot of pain.

  1. The intercom system doesn't work for people who are very hearing impaired. He never heard a single word through the intercom system from the nurse's station, and was reduced to moaning louder and louder until help arrived, in person.

This is the kind of problem that the Department of Justice (DoJ) program called the Barrier-Free Healthcare Initiative is intent on addressing. The DoJ, which oversees compliance with Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), has committed resources and attention to the important work of providing effective communication for patients with hearing loss in hospitals, pharmacies, rehab facilities, and doctors’ offices.

My home state, Virginia, has jumped on board with this initiative, and passed its own initiative to assist hospitals with ADA compliance. Signed by Governor Terry McAuliffe earlier this year, Chapter 113 reads as follows:

Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Virginia:

That the Department of Health shall (i) work with stakeholders to develop guidelines for hospitals to ensure that hospitals are complying with requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act and that patients and family members with sensory disabilities are able to communicate effectively with healthcare providers and (ii) report on its progress in developing such guidelines to the General Assembly no later than December 1, 2015.

The bill would not have made it to the floor, much less the printer, had it not been for the efforts of Arva Priola, the outreach coordinator for the deaf and hard of hearing at the disAbility Resource Center in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Priola, who wears cochlear implants, saw the need firsthand from her experience in the recovery room. “I always direct the nurses to mark my cochlear implants so they are put into the correct ears. That’s also true for hearing aids. It allows us to use our hearing sense when we wake up from a procedure,” she says.

Virginia’s initiative is intended to help hospitals comply with the requirements of the ADA. Those requirements include (in layman's terms):

  • assessment of each patient's communication needs

  • provision of the technology or other assistance (for patients who are deaf, this is often ASL interpreters)

  • covering the costs, if any, of providing that assistance

Priola not only saw the need for such an effort by the state but also consulted with agencies and stakeholders, such as the Hearing Loss Association of America's Virginia Chapter, the Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind, Association for Late-Deafened Adults, the Virginia Association for the Deaf, and the Virginia Department for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (where I serve on the advisory board). She then approached Delegate Robert "Bobby" Orrock (VIrginia House of Delegates) to sponsor the measure. He agreed.

The rest is history. Strong support (unanimous, in fact) was received in both legislative chambers, and the governor signed it in March. The ball is now in the Virginia Department of Health's court, since it is designated as the agency to make it happen (along with the stakeholders and cooperating agencies that will be involved in implementation).

It's a positive note, not only for Virginia and its governing bodies, but for demonstrating what we can do as advocates when we really put our minds, and energies, and focus, to work. And when we have a mover and shaker like Arva Priola.

The DoJ's ADA website is full of information about its national initiative. Click here to see some of its recent actions in enforcing the ADA for communications issues in all healthcare settings, not only hospitals.

Staff writer Kathi Mestayer serves on advisory boards for the Virginia Department for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and the Greater Richmond, Virginia, chapter of the Hearing Loss Association of America. She writes about the science of how our brains make sense of sound at BeaconReader.com.

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Hearing Makes Me Happy!

By Alex Mussomeli

By all accounts Alex Mussomeli is a typical elementary school kid; he likes art, music, sports, cooking, and video games. But what is phenomenal about Alex is how much he is comfortable with and unfazed by his hearing loss, and also how much, for a 10-year-old, he understands the technology that helps him to hear. Diagnosed with sensorineural hearing loss, Alex was fitted with hearing aids in both ears at age 3 months, and when he was 3 years old, he got a cochlear implant for his right ear. He continues to use both devices.

When his fourth grade teacher asked her students to write on a topic they know a lot about, Alex chose hearing loss and his hearing devices. The paper impressed the hearing-speech pathologist at school so much that it was shared on Speech4Hearing.com, a website that offers speech advice for parents of children with hearing loss. 

It also impressed us at Hearing Health Foundation (HHF). Here are some excerpts:

“There are two ways to help people with hearing loss hear,” Alex wrote. “One is a common way, a hearing aid, and the other way is not as common but is getting more common every day, which is a cochlear implant. I have both.”

“The reason people might need to get a cochlear implant is that they might not hear. They could be deaf or have hearing loss. The surgery of getting an implant can be a big decision. First the nurses give the patient sleeping medicine. Then, the surgeon drills into the skull. Next, the surgeon puts in a magnet. After the surgery you have to wait one month for the head to heal from the surgery.”

Once the healing period is over, the implant is turned on and it is programmed, or mapped, to fit the specific hearing requirements of the patient, and then the brain has to learn to process the sounds that the implant picks up and delivers directly to the brain via the auditory nerve. Nada Alsaigh, Alex’s mother, says Alex’s young age worked in his favor. “We were very lucky,” she says. “He was very fast learning how to use the implant to hear.”

“The way you hear with a hearing aid is like a first aid kit. The hearing aid assists the person in hearing,” Alex wrote in his paper. “An implant is better than a hearing aid because you can hear better with it. The reason is that the implant has a computer like processor that sends the sound through the nerve to the brain.”

Alex and his brother Joe, who is 12, are incredibly close. “We face challenges and we try to overcome them. This was a learning experience for all of us and made Joe more mature at a younger age. Joe is just a loving and supportive brother,” Nada Alsaigh says of Joe. The family treats Alex’s hearing loss as a part of who he is without defining who he is.

While thankful for existing technology, the family is also committed to helping HHF and its Hearing Restoration Project (HRP) find a cure for hearing loss and tinnitus. The HRP is on track to determine how to regenerate the inner ear sensory cells that, when missing or damaged, lead to hearing loss. The promise of a biologic cure for hearing loss could potentially remove the issues of adapting to hardware for Alex and the 50 million other adults and children in the U.S. who have hearing loss.

Smart and thriving, Alex realizes he is fortunate:

"Hearing makes me happy!” Alex says. “I am grateful that my parents got me a hearing aid and a cochlear implant. Someday, I believe that we will find a cure to have hearing cells come back to life! We can't give up hope! Hearing Health Foundation can help us find the cure!"

Alex's paper on hearing loss is availible in full, here.

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Make Listening Safe

By Sloan Blanton

Our ears are one of our most precious commodities. With our ears we are able to communicate with our peers, enjoy the beauty of music, tune into the natural world around us and become aware of safety hazards, such as sirens. Some people are born without the ability to hear, and for thousands of years those individuals lived without any legitimate hearing solutions. In the past 150 years, numerous technological advancements have emerged, providing hearing assistance through the use of hearing aids, assistive listening devices, cochlear implants, and more.

However, today's increasingly industrialized society poses a new risk. A growing number of people are prone to noise-induced hearing loss. Our smartphones and personal audio devices increase our vulnerability, especially when we are tuned in for extended periods of time. Concerts, nightclubs, and sporting events make us prone to hearing loss as well.

For all of these reasons and more, the First International Conference on Prevention and Rehabilitation of Hearing Impairment established the annual International Ear Care Day in 2007. The event is held on March 3 each year to build advocacy and promote hearing care in countries all around the world. This year's theme is: "Make Listening Safe."

The World Health Organization (WHO) works closely with this event, releasing an annual assessment of each country's status in providing quality ear care services. This year, the WHO found startling numbers to be true about the state of hearing loss in the world; over 1.1 billion young adults ages 12 to 35 are at risk for "recreational hearing loss." In this age group, 43 million people currently deal with the unfortunate effects of hearing loss, whether it is noise-induced or through birth defects or illnesses. Recreational hearing loss leads to many harmful effects. Physical and mental health can be affected, as well as employment and education opportunities. Hearing loss may also lead to attention-seeking behaviors and learning disabilities.

“As they go about their daily lives doing what they enjoy, more and more young people are placing themselves at risk of hearing loss,” says Dr. Etienne Krug, the director of the WHO’s Department for Management of Noncommunicable Diseases, Disability, Violence, and Injury Prevention. “They should be aware that once you lose your hearing, it won’t come back. Taking simple preventive actions will allow people to continue to enjoy themselves without putting their hearing at risk.”

Both intensity and duration affect safe listening levels. The safe level at 85 decibels (dB) is eight hours of continual exposure. The number drops drastically at 100 dB to just 15 minutes. Exposure to these loud sounds usually leads to temporary hearing loss and a ringing sensation in the ear (tinnitus). When the exposure is particularly loud, regular, or prolonged, it can lead to permanent hearing loss and a lack of speech comprehension, and is damaging the ear's sensory cells. High-frequency sounds are typically the first to be impacted.

To reduce the risk of noise-induced hearing loss, set the volume on your personal audio device to no greater than 60 percent of the maximum volume. Wear earplugs in bars, at sporting events, and in other loud places. Even using headphones allows sound to be customized for individual listeners. Take short breaks while in loud environments to reduce the harmful effects of noise exposure, such as avoiding loudspeakers.

By having one’s ears checked regularly, individuals are able to monitor the onset of hearing loss before it becomes a serious concern. There are also many smartphone apps that provide useful information regarding volume levels to inform users of whether they are exposing their precious ears to risky sound levels.

Hearing Health Foundation is a proud supporter and partner of International Ear Care Day. It is worth marking on your calendar in an effort to curb the trend of noise-induced hearing loss while encouraging mankind to develop lasting solutions to lifelong problems.

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Advances in Brain Training

By Kathi Mestayer

Because the brain is an integral component of the hearing process, it sometimes needs help adjusting to new types of sound. The brain needs to fill in some of the blanks when hearing is impaired or when adjusting to a new hearing aid or cochlear implant. “Aural rehabilitation is so much more than speechreading [lipreading],” says Kathleen Cienkowski, Ph.D., an associate professor and the program director of audiology in the University of Connecticut’s Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences Department. “It’s basically retraining the brain.” She adds, “Cochlear implants, hearing aids, and listening systems can do wonders, but no assistive device is as smart as your brain. Our brains know what we want— and don’t want—to hear; integrate the other senses; and interpret body language, tone, pacing, and context.” Getting used to new sounds is a big adjustment. That’s when aural or auditory rehabilitation comes in. Cienkowski, who also coordinates the Aural Rehabilitation Interest Group for the American Speech-Language- Hearing Association (ASHA), defines it as “improving the quality of life and communication for those with hearing loss.”

To read the full article please read Fall issue of Hearing Health Magazine by clicking here

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Communication Is Critical to Care

By Kathi Mestayer

I recently visited my father, who wears a cochlear implant, in a rehab facility, where he was recovering from surgery.

His room, right next to the nurses’ station, was pretty noisy. There was a constant array of beeps, rings, clanging equipment, and talk. I measured the noise level with my decibel meter smartphone app (AudioTools) and got a reading of around 65 dBA inside the room, about 10 feet from the door. That’s equivalent to normal conversation, but it could make it very difficult for a person with a cochlear implant to correctly understand a medical question.

The rehab center staff was well-meaning, attentive, and caring. But the level of awareness of communication problems for those with hearing loss was spotty.  

  • No captioning phones (and no idea of whether they would work in the facility).  

  • No idea of what a cochlear implant looked like.

  • No way to communicate in writing.

To be fair, that’s not unusual. Earlier this year, I visited my uncle in the hospital. He had had a hearing loss for years. Due to his Parkinson’s disease, he also had a hard time speaking. They were having difficulty getting him to agree to the doctor’s recommendation of a colonoscopy. He was under the mistaken impression that they were talking about a colostomy, and hesitant to agree. Fortunately, I had brought in a whiteboard and marker the day before. I wrote the words “Colonoscopy” and “Colostomy” in big letters on the board, and crossed out “Colostomy” with a big X. He took the write board and wrote “U Sure?” on it. “YES,” I said, nodded, and wrote on the board. He agreed to the procedure on the spot.

I recently became aware of a two-year-old Department of Justice (DoJ) program called the Barrier-Free Healthcare Initiative. The Department of Justice, which also oversees the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), has committed resources and attention to the important work of providing, among other things, effective communication for patients with hearing loss in hospitals, pharmacies, rehab facilities, and doctors’ offices.

Useful resources:

Click here to get the full scope of the Barrier-Free Healthcare Initiative.

The ADA’s primer on how to communicate effectively with people who have hearing loss.

And if you’re wondering whether the DoJ is making headway, read updates here including about the success the DoJ has had working with healthcare facilities to help them meet the ADA requirements.  

Kathi Mestayer writes about workplace noise issues. Read her articles here:

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Tips for Hearing Well in the Classroom

By Yishane Lee

It’s hard to hear well in school. Between the hard surfaces, open spaces such as gyms and cafeterias, shouting teachers, and the children themselves who can be counted on NOT to be quiet, it’s hard for hearing children as well as children with hearing loss to always hear well.

education-back-to-school.jpg

TED Talk speaker Julian Treasure says children sitting in the fourth row of a classroom lose as much of half of what is being said.

“Now that's not just deaf children. That could be any child who's got a cold, glue ear, an ear infection, even hay fever,” he says. “On a given day, one in eight children fall into that group. Then you have children for whom English is a second language, or whatever they're being taught in is a second language,” Treasure says in his TED Talk on why architects need to use their ears.

Fortunately, there are ways you can hear better in the classroom. Here are some tips.

• Sit in the front of the classroom, and make sure the classroom is well lit, particularly the teacher or whoever is doing the talking.

• Don’t sit too close to air conditioners and other appliances or machinery that can make it difficult to hear.

• Use assistive devices. As 7-year-old Samantha Brownlie recounts in the YouTube video about how she hears better in school, “Samantha’s Fun FM and Hearing Aid Book” (which you can now buy), an FM unit can help. The teacher wears a microphone around her neck that transmits wirelessly to Samantha’s hearing device.

• Schedule time with the teachers to review how to use the FM unit. As the parents of Lily, who wears bilateral cochlear implants, note in their blog post about prepping for school, “Make sure there is a management plan in place, especially for the FM unit.... There are so many moving parts.”

• Bring extra batteries and cords.

• Encourage the school to use drapes, carpets, and soundproofing material to help dim noise and reverberation.

• Consider auditory training programs that can help your child hear better in noise. A recent study in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America found that auditory training boosted speech understanding in school children with hearing loss by 50 percent, even three months after the study. The training involved practicing the comprehension of speech in the presence of “interrupted” white noise—white noise with brief silences. Read about auditory training programs and other tips for hearing better in noise in the Spring 2012 Hearing Health magazine “Hearing Aids 101” column.

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Emerging Research Grants for 2014 Announced

By Tara Guastella

HHF is proud to announce that 10 leading hearing scientists have been an awarded an Emerging Research Grant. It was an incredibly competitive funding cycle and it is a true honor for these investigators to have risen to the top and received this award.

Six grantees are first-year grant recipients and are studying areas such as noise-induced hearing loss, tinnitus, ototoxicity (hearing loss caused by certain drugs and medications), age-related hearing loss, and hearing aids.

Four previous grantees are receiving a second year of funding for their work. This group is researching such areas as central auditory processing disorder (CAPD), auditory physiology, cochlear implants, genetic hearing loss, and Usher syndrome.

One first-year grant recipient, whose work is funded by the continuing support of the General Grand Chapter Royal Arch Masons International, is aimed at developing better ways to assess auditory processing disorders. Here is an excerpt on his work:

Srikanta Mishra, Ph.D.

New Mexico State University

Medial Efferent Mechanisms in Auditory Processing Disorders

Many individuals experience listening difficulty in background noise despite clinically normal hearing and no obvious auditory pathology. This condition has often received a clinical label called auditory processing disorder (APD). However, the mechanisms and pathophysiology of APD are poorly understood. One mechanism thought to aid in listening-in-noise is the medial olivocochlear (MOC) inhibition— a part of the descending auditory system. The purpose of this translational project is to evaluate whether the functioning of the MOC system is altered in individuals with APD. The benefits of measuring MOC inhibition in individuals with APD are twofold: 1) it could be useful to better define APD and identify its potential mechanisms, and 2) it may elucidate the functional significance of MOC efferents in listening in complex environments. The potential role of the MOC system in APD pathophysiology, should it be confirmed, would be of significant clinical interest because current APD clinical test batteries lack mechanism-based physiologic tools.

Read more about the research all of the 2014 grant recipients are conducting.

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