Hearing Aids - Science topic

Background: Auditory agnosia for environmental sounds is a type of agnosia attributed to central auditory dysfunction. It is common in Alzheimer’s disease, and is associated with peripheral hearing loss, although independent of it, and presumed independent of language deficits. The effects of this type of agnosia on daily life in Alzheimer’s diseas...

Humor in Gerontology and Aging In order to commemorate her 79th birthday, Julie Andrews made a special appearance at Manhattan’s Radio City Music Hall for the benefit of AARP. One of the musical numbers she performed was an updated version of “My Favorite Things” from “The Sound of Music. Here are the new lyrics: Boxtops and nose drops and need...

Background: Deaf squad athletes regularly participate in national/international competitions and most prepare for competitions in clubs with hearing athletes. Hearing loss is associated with difficulties in balance control which may impair functionality. The aim of this study is to provide epidemiological data on sports injuries in deaf squad athle...

Purpose The breadth of binaural pitch fusion, the integration of sounds differing in frequency across the two ears, can limit the ability to segregate and understand speech in background noise. Binaural pitch fusion is one type of central auditory processing that may still be developing in the pre-adolescent age range. In addition, children with he...

Deep neural network-based direction of arrival (DOA) estimation systems often rely on spatial features as input to learn a mapping for estimating the DOA of multiple talkers. Aiming to improve the accuracy of multi-talker DOA estimation for binaural hearing aids with a known number of active talkers, we investigate the usage of periodicity features...

Objective To compare the 3-year outcomes of the modified minimally invasive Ponto surgery (m-MIPS) to both the original MIPS (o-MIPS) and linear incision technique with soft tissue preservation (LIT-TP) for inserting bone-anchored hearing implants (BAHIs). Study design Prospective study with three patient groups: m-MIPS, o-MIPS, and LIT-TP. Setti...

Objectives Typically developing children (TD) exhibit linguistic outcomes commensurate with their chronological age, as linguistic input critically shapes early language development. Conversely, children with sensory deficits, such as hearing loss (HL), lack access to the auditory-linguistic information essential for developing spoken language. Thi...

Cochlear implants (CIs) restore the perception of sound for individuals with severe to profound hearing loss by employing electrical stimulation to directly activate the remaining auditory neurons. Post-implantation ipsilateral hearing loss has been observed in every patient series involving hearing preservation cochlear implantation. Patients with...

Wide dynamic range compression (WDRC) and noise reduction both play important roles in hearing aids. WDRC provides level-dependent amplification so that the level of sound produced by the hearing aid falls between the hearing threshold and the highest comfortable level of the listener, while noise reduction reduces ambient noise with the goal of im...

Background/Objectives: The cortical auditory evoked potential P1 response is a biomarker of cortical auditory maturation for tracking longitudinal cortical maturation in children with hearing loss after treatment with hearing aids and/or cochlear implants. In conjunction with hearing treatments, children with hearing loss commonly receive language...

Purpose Children develop social-pragmatic understanding with the help of sensory, cognitive, and linguistic functions by interacting with other people. This study aimed to explore (a) associations between auditory, demographic, cognitive, and linguistic factors and social-pragmatic understanding in children who use bilateral hearing aids (BiHAs) or...

Background: Mild cognitive impairment is increasingly recognized as a precursor to more severe neurodegenerative conditions, particularly in the context of aging. Recent studies have highlighted the intersection of hearing loss and cognitive decline, suggesting that auditory deficits may exacerbate cognitive impairments in older adults, proposing t...

Background/Objectives: Adults with hearing loss demonstrate poorer overall health outcomes (e.g., physical health, cognitive functioning and wellbeing) and lower levels of physical activity/function compared to those without hearing loss. Hearing aids have the potential to improve cognitive and wellbeing factors, but there is a dearth of evidence o...

Binaural speech intelligibility in rooms is a complex process that is affected by many factors including room acoustics, hearing loss, and hearing aid (HA) signal processing. Intelligibility is evaluated in this paper for a simulated room combined with a simulated hearing aid. The test conditions comprise three spatial configurations of the speech...

Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arm (SCARA robot) takes less space and is easier to install compared to Cartesian robotic systems. It can execute several assembly activities demanding high speed and accuracy, such as pacemakers, hearing aids, and so on. This research aims to develop a fuzzy logic-based technique for synchronizing trajectory pla...

The recent ACHIEVE study (https://www.achievestudy.org/) demonstrated the substantial benefit of hearing aid use in those with mild‐moderate hearing loss and at increased risk for cognitive decline. The FDA’s OTC HA Rule provides a reliable basis for technology innovation to improve accessibility, affordability and wear of quality hearing aids in t...

Background Rural populations are under‐represented in cognitive studies worldwide. The few extant studies report differences in risk profiles for pre‐dementia and dementia syndromes among urban and rural residents. We compared risk factors and brain substrates of Motoric Cognitive Risk (MCR) syndrome, a pre‐dementia syndrome identified by slow gait...

Background Our authors from around the world met to summarise the available knowledge, decide which potentially modifiable risk factors for dementia have compelling evidence and create the most comprehensive analysis to date for potentially modifiable risk factors to inform policy, give individuals the opportunity to control their risks and generat...

Background Occupational therapists (OTs) play a crucial role in rehabilitation, aiming to improve the lives of individuals with sensory impairment and an increased risk of cognitive decline. Despite being responsible for cognitive screenings on occasion, they have expressed limited confidence in performing these with their clients with visual and/o...

Background Hearing loss occurs commonly with age and is more prevalent among adults with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) or Alzheimer’s Disease and related dementias (ADRD) than among older adults with typical cognitive abilities. Over‐the‐counter (OTC) hearing aids are a recently approved, lower‐cost method of hearing treatment which can be access...

Objective We investigated use of hearing care among US veterans and explore motivations, barriers, and adherence to hearing healthcare. Study Design Cross‐sectional online survey. Setting US Veterans. Methods This cross‐sectional, online survey‐based study included 287 respondents who identified themselves as veterans on ResearchMatch (NIH‐spons...

Background The elderly population is particularly susceptible to the development of age‐related hearing loss and cognitive impairment. The gradual decline in auditory perception often goes unnoticed, leading to a detrimental impact on their quality of life, mental well‐being, and overall communication skills. Extensive research indicates that prolo...

Purpose The aim of this study was to measure the effects of frequency spacing (i.e., F2 minus F1) on spectral integration for vowel perception in simulated bilateral electric–acoustic stimulation (BiEAS), electric–acoustic stimulation (EAS), and bimodal hearing. Method Twenty listeners with typical hearing participated in synthetic vowel recogniti...

Objectives: Hearing aids (HAs) have been used for standard high-frequency hearing loss and tinnitus, but their effects on speech intelligibility in noise (SIN) in people with normal hearing, including hidden hearing loss (HHL), have been little explored. Methods: We included in a prospective cohort study patients who experience poor SIN and have no...

Background: Aging can lead to degeneration processes in multiple organs, including the auditory organs, resulting in hearing loss. Hearing loss in the elderly often affects their quality of life (QOL). One of the procedures to improve this could be done by fitting hearing aids (HA). According to the National Center of Health Statistics (NCHS) data,...

Los niños con pérdida auditiva (PA) portadores de implantes cocleares pueden mostrar dificultades en las habilidades de función ejecutiva (FE), pero se desconoce si estas limitaciones están presentes en niños con menor grado de PA portadores de audífonos. Este estudio tiene por objetivos evaluar cómo afecta el grado de PA a la FE e identificar qué...

Introduction Technical aids (TAs) are health devices (e.g., hearing aids, prostheses, wheelchairs) used to restore a body function or compensate for disability. In France, TAs are assessed based on clinical data, as are any medical devices (MDs). Considering that TAs are special MDs (no curative action), specific assessment methods might be propose...

Auditory attention decoding from electroencephalogram (EEG) could infer to which source the user is attending in noisy environments. Decoding algorithms and experimental paradigm designs are crucial for the development of technology in practical applications. To simulate real-world scenarios, this study proposed a cue-masked auditory attention para...

Background Age-related hearing loss and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) independently increase dementia risk. The Ageing and Cognitive Health Evaluation in Elders randomised controlled trial (RCT) found hearing aids reduce cognitive decline in high-risk older adults with poor hearing. Methods This pilot RCT in London memory clinics randomised peop...

Background/Objectives: A heterozygous mutation in the WFS1 gene is responsible for autosomal dominant non-syndromic hearing loss (DFNA6/14/38) and Wolfram-like syndrome, which is characterized by bilateral sensorineural hearing loss with optic atrophy and/or diabetes mellitus. However, detailed clinical features for the patients with the heterozygo...

Hearing loss resulting from prolonged exposure to loud noise is known as noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL), and it often affects professionals exposed to occupational sources of high sound levels. Among the professionals chronically exposed to noise, dentists use instrumentation that produces high-frequency noise. In this occupational category, NIH...

Background Prior longitudinal studies among older adults have documented associations between hearing loss and changes in brain morphology. Whether interventions involving hearing aids can reduce age‐related atrophy is unknown. A substudy within the Aging and Cognitive Health Evaluation in Elders (ACHIEVE, Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT03243422...

Background Various explanations have been proposed for how hearing impairment might be associated with increased risk of dementia. Several theories have proposed direct links with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) neuropathology, either due to shared aetiology (i.e. AD proteinopathies cause impaired hearing), or due to an interaction (i.e. functional brain...

Background Hearing loss is highly prevalent and can have significant consequences for older adults aging with cognitive impairment. However, few older adults use hearing aids and disparities in care exist by race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic position. To understand the intersection of hearing loss and cognitive impairment with the ultimate goal of...

This paper introduces HAAQI-Net, a non-intrusive music audio quality assessment model for hearing aid users. Unlike traditional methods such as Hearing Aid Audio Quality Index (HAAQI), which requires intrusive reference signal comparisons, HAAQI-Net offers a more accessible and computationally efficient alternative. Leveraging a bidirectional long...

The relationship between hearing loss (HL) and Parkinson’s disease (PD) remains unclear. Using individual-level and summary-level data from the UK Biobank and the largest genome-wide association studies, we examined this link through observational, Mendelian randomization and genetic pleiotropy analyses. Among 158,229 participants, PD risk rose wit...

As the global issue of hearing loss becomes increasingly severe, developing effective speech intelligibility prediction methods is crucial for improving the performance of hearing aids. However, current methods struggle in noisy environments and overlook individual differences in hearing loss between ears, which impacts prediction accuracy. Therefo...

La pandemia por COVID-19 ha obligado a adaptarse a las clases virtuales, que han generado efectos no deseados en el estudiante, más aún si estas implican la utilización de audífonos, cuyo uso prolongado altera la audición y produce condiciones adversas en la salud. El objetivo de la presente investigación consiste en determinar las afectaciones de...

Objective To assess the awareness about hearing loss and ear health among adults in Jordan. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted where a questionnaire was filled from the month of November to the month of December of the year 2023, to assess the level of awareness about hearing loss and ear health. The participants included were Jordanian...

This study examines the relationship between mothers’ attitude, communication competence, maternal treatment styles and self-esteem among deaf children who are currently enrolled in deaf high schools in Iran. Previous studies among deaf children have explored into factors such as types of education, parents’ role, deaf parents’ impact, the severity...

The paper presents the design and development of a hearing aid with intelligent features aimed at helping patients with hearing disabilities to recognise sound and automatically adapt the audio based on different levels of hearing loss. This study was carried out to evaluate several algorithms for the design of hearing aids and to verify the perfor...

BACKGROUND: Hearing loss is a very common condition, especially among the elderly. A large number of people that have disabling hearing loss may benefit from hearing aids.AIM: The purpose of this study was to measure quality of life and satisfaction among patients who use hearing aids.METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted, in which 100 pat...

Background: Hearing loss in children can have a detrimental impact on their development, thus lowering the psychological well-being of parents. This study examined the amount of parental stress, learned helplessness, and perceived social support in mothers of children with hearing loss (MCHL) and mothers of typically developing children (MTDC), as...

Objectives: This study aims to describe the stress levels experienced by parents of children with hearing loss who use conventional hearing aids or cochlear implants, and to assess the correlation between parental stress and the auditory skills acquired by the children. Methods: The study was conducted at the Policlinic “Gaetano Martino” in Messina...

The present study will present Kemp’s design in the classroom setting for students with hearing impairments. Based on his model, the researcher will design various instructional methods of how to teach students with hearing aids in the school, focusing on the instruction of English to America K-12 students. The study will also include a list of ass...

One of the tenets of a posthuman vision is the eradication of disability through technology. Within this site of ‘no future’, as Alison Kafer describes, the disabled body is merged with artificial intelligence technology or transformed into a prosthetic superhuman. These imaginative possibilities are materialised in a future-oriented mindset in con...

The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that by 2050, nearly 2.5 billion people are expected to have some degree of hearing loss (HL) and at least 700 million will need hearing rehabilitation. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop treatment strategies for HL. At present, the main treatment strategies for HL are hearing aids and cochlear...

This study aimed to evaluate two objectives: first, the health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and socio-demographic characteristics of children with cochlear implants (CIs) or hearing aids (HAs) on the Kid-KINDLR_children_7-13 questionnaire, and second to analyze parental background factors and the perceptions of their children with CIs or HAs on...

Introduction Individuals with hearing loss and hearing aid users report higher levels of listening effort and fatigue in daily life compared with those with normal hearing. However, there is a lack of objective measures to evaluate these experiences in real-world settings. Recent studies have found that higher sound pressure levels (SPL) and lower...

This systematic review examines the exclusion within the inclusion practices of learners with hearing impairment (LwHI) in inclusive schools. Four databases, Google Scholar, PubMed, EBSCO-host, and Research Gate, were used. The study was guided by the 5W+1H framework for systematic review. The search was conducted in September 2024, and the searchi...

Speech enhancement improves communication in noisy environments, affecting areas such as automatic speech recognition (ASR), hearing aids, and telecommunications. With these domains typically being power-constrained and event-based, and often requiring low latency, neuromorphic algorithms–particularly spiking neural networks (SNNs)–hold significant...

The increased use of face masks for infection prevention has resulted in difficulties in speech understanding. Thus, there is a need for tuning of acoustic plans in hearing aids to compensate for the loss of acoustic information due to the mask.Previous studies focused on isolated vowel sounds. Our study measured the effect of surgery masks on the...

In this study a method for determining the best placement and optimal orientation of the implantable piezoelectric accelerometer attached to the short process of the incus is developed. The accelerometer is intended to be used as a replacement for an external microphone to enable totally implantable cochlea implants or as part of a totally implanta...

Background There is a dearth of information on the effects of bone conductive devices on temporal processing in individuals with single-sided deafness (SSD). This study investigates the effect of an adhesive bone conductive device on temporal processing in adults with SSD. Methods A prospective cohort study of temporal processing in adults with SS...

Purpose Children with hearing loss (CHL) who use hearing devices (cochlear implants or hearing aids) and communicate orally have trouble comprehending sentences with noncanonical order. This study explores sentence comprehension strategies in Spanish-speaking CHL, focusing on their ability to integrate morphosyntactic cues (word order, morphologica...

Objective Translating the newly developed Empowerment Audiology Questionnaire, EmpAQ-15 to Swedish, and performing content validation on the Swedish version. Design Best-practice principles using forward and back translations which were revised by a committee prior to field testing. Field testing was conducted by cognitive interviews with hearing-...

This study evaluated the effectiveness and usage of a smartphone application for adjusting the hearing impression of cochlear implants or hearing aids in everyday contexts. Building on previous laboratory research that demonstrated subjective auditory perception improvements through personalized settings, this research aimed to confirm these findin...

Introduction Hearing loss affects ~1. 5 billion people worldwide and is the greatest risk factor for tinnitus, a condition that can further worsen people's quality of life, lead to high anxiety and depression, and affect general health and wellbeing. Objectives This study aimed to assess the impact of cochlear implants (CIs) on tinnitus perception...

Understanding speech in noisy environments is a widespread challenge, even for people with clinically normal hearing and users of hearing aids and cochlear implants. While these devices improve speech audibility, they do not optimize the brain’s ability to isolate relevant speech from background noise. Tonic vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) has been s...

Background Cochlear implants (CIs) have the potential to facilitate auditory restoration in deaf children and contribute to the maturation of the auditory cortex. The type of CI may impact hearing rehabilitation in children with CI. We aimed to study central auditory processing activation patterns during speech perception in Mandarin-speaking pedia...

Background and Aim: Individuals who suffer Hearing Loss (HL) from inefficient auditory input will experience difficulty in phonological processing and reading. This study aimed to investigate the phonological processing and word and non-word reading abilities of Farsi- speaking children with Cochlear Implants (CIs), Hearing Aids (HAs) and Normal He...

In open-fit digital hearing aids (HAs), the processing delay influences comb-filter effects that arise from the interaction of the processed HA sound with the unprocessed direct sound. The current study investigated potential relations between preferred processing delay, spectral and temporal processing abilities, and self-reported listening habits...

El presente texto nace en el marco del proyecto de tesis doctoral, siendo becaria nacional de doctorado en educación Anid de Chile en co-tutela con la Universidad de Valencia (España) y la Universidad Bernardo O'Higgins (Chile). El nivel de la educación en los países iberoamericanos ha disminuido desde la pandemia, sin embargo, las brechas educativ...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a concept whose goal is to imitate human intellectual activity in computers. It emerged in the 1950s and has gone through three booms. We are in the third boom, and it will continue. Medical applications of AI include diagnosing otitis media from images of the eardrum, often outperforming human doctors. Temporal bone...

Background/Objectives: Adult hearing-impaired patients qualifying for cochlear implants typically exhibit less than 60% sentence recognition under the best hearing aid conditions, either in quiet or noisy environments, with speech and noise presented through a single speaker. This study examines the influence of deep neural network-based (DNN-based...

In the intricate acoustic landscapes where speech intelligibility is challenged by noise and reverberation, multichannel speech enhancement emerges as a promising solution for individuals with hearing loss. Such algorithms are commonly evaluated at the utterance scale. However, this approach overlooks the granular acoustic nuances revealed by phone...

Purpose Although the existing literature has explored the link between cognitive functioning and speech recognition in noise, the specific role of fluid intelligence still needs to be studied. Given the established association between working memory capacity (WMC) and fluid intelligence and the predictive power of WMC for speech recognition in nois...

Introduction Hearing loss and Deafness/deafness affects as much as 5% of the world's population and has a considerable health and economic burden. We explored the relationship with hearing and hearing aids as well as other assistive technology for health in general with a cohort of UK adults who have conductive hearing loss. We anticipated that ins...