Articles

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    October is audiology awareness month!

    National Audiology Awareness Month! October marks the start of National Audiology Awareness Month – yes, we get our very own awareness month – and an opportunity to highlight the important role loved ones play in your support when you have hearing loss. At The Hearing Clinic we always encourage patients to bring a partner or other loved one along to appointments so we can hear first-hand how their hearing loss manifests in day-to-day life with their nearest and dearest. Remember, family members are usually well aware of a person’s hearing loss long before the person themselves. We also like to speak to family members because they can tell us how…

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    Deep Neural Networks in hearing aids!

    What’s all the fuss about the deep neural network? If you’ve been worrying about the potential for artificial intelligence – or AI – to take over the world, there’s one area where it can only be a force for good. That’s in hearing aids.  The latest high-end models use a deep neural network, or DNN, to deliver very clear speech recognition in noise – typically one of the hardest jobs of a hearing aid.  The DNN uses highly sophisticated, multi-layered modelling to process data in a way that’s inspired by the human brain. Once the system has been trained to recognise what it needs to, it can make predictions and…

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    Tre Lowe, The Apprentice and tinnitus

    While Tre didn’t become Lord Sugar’s next business partner, there’s one thing he is boss of – his tinnitus! If you caught the last series of The Apprentice, which concluded in the spring, you’ll have seen musician and entrepreneur, Tre Lowe, make it through to the semi-final. While Tre didn’t become Lord Sugar’s next business partner, there’s one thing he is boss of – his tinnitus. Tre has lived with tinnitus – a ringing, buzzing or roaring in the ears, which has no external source – since he was 15 and is keen to share his experience of the condition to help others. Tre describes his multifrequency tinnitus as so…

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    Groundbreaking surgery restores toddler’s hearing

    Groundbreaking surgery restores toddler’s hearing After a 16-minute surgical procedure, 18-month-old Opal Sandy now has near-normal hearing. The toddler, from Oxfordshire, had her hearing restored as part of a pioneering gene therapy trial. Opal was born with auditory neuropathy, which disrupts nerve impulses between the inner ear and the brain, thought to be the cause of a faulty gene. During the surgery at Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge, Opal received an infusion containing a working copy of the gene, and can now hear almost perfectly. The outcome follows decades of work to reach a solution that worked in humans, and the therapy was developed by biotech firm, Regeneron. The trial will…

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    National Writing Day

    Discover inspirational deaf authors on National Writing Day Today is National Writing Day which made us think about the writers and books we love, particularly ones either written by deaf or hard of hearing people, or that feature characters who are deaf or hard of hearing. If you’re looking to discover some inspiring writing, look no further, with a few of our top picks. For crime lovers, Dark Pines, by Will Dean, offers up some Scandi-noir as protagonist, Tuva, a deaf journalist, strives to solve a cold case from twenty years ago. In A Maiden’s Grave by Jeffery Deaver, deaf students are taken hostage by escaped convicts and use sign language as their…

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    Poor captioning in the cinema

    Deaf audiences are being excluded from fully experiencing the films they see because of issues with captioning – that’s according to research from the University of Sheffield. The study found that poor quality captions meant deaf audiences couldn’t experience elements like suspense. In some films, the descriptions of sound lacked specific information key to the plot and therefore affected how much suspense deaf audiences felt during the film. However, good things are possible and have been done on some films or TV series. For example, on the Stranger Things series, the captioners worked with orchestrators to choose the best descriptions of sound to help deaf audiences best experience relevant moments.…

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    Hyperacusis. Are you sensitive to loud sounds?

    Are loud sounds overwhelming or painful? Damage or changes to the inner ear, either from the ageing process, a head injury, ear infection or exposure to loud noise, can reduce your tolerance for sound and lead to a condition called hyperacusis. If you suffer from hyperacusis you’ll know about it because you’ll experience discomfort and even severe pain – sometimes in response to moderate or even soft sounds. You might also suffer from tinnitus, a ringing or buzzing sound experienced in the ears or head, which is reported by more than 80% of people who have hyperacusis. It’s thought that hyperacusis is caused by changes in the central auditory system,…

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    Grafts that replicate the human ear!

    Researchers produce 3D printed grafts replicating the human ear Scientists have used state-of-the-art tissue engineering techniques and a 3D printer to create a replica of an adult human ear that looks and feels natural – good news for people who may be born with a malformed ear, or who experience trauma to an ear. Ears are extremely hard to reconstruct – requiring multiple surgical procedures, not to mention a high level of artistry from the surgeon. This new technology may therefore lead to a solution that feels real for thousands of people. Traditionally, surgeons would build a replacement ear using cartilage removed from the patient’s ribs. However, this can be…

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    Tasha opens up about her Deaf accent.

    An ex-Love Island contestant has been raising the profile of deaf people, and the accent people who are deaf, or who have a profound hearing loss, can have when they speak. Tasha Ghouri was Love Island’s first deaf contestant, and she recently posted on her TikTok channel sounding different. Tasha usually wears her cochlear implant to help her hear, but one morning chose to film her daily beauty vlog without her implant. Speaking to her followers in her ‘deaf accent’ Tasha said, “I don’t know how loud I’m speaking, or how clear I’m speaking. I normally never put my cochlear implant in in the morning.” She added that similar videos…

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    Breakthrough in understanding Noise Induced Hearing Loss

    Researchers have discovered the molecular mechanism that underpins noise-induced hearing loss, paving the way for the development of an effective medical treatment. A team at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in the USA have published a study showing that noise-induced hearing loss stems from cellular damage in the inner ear associated with an excess of free-floating zinc, an essential mineral for proper cell function and hearing. By performing experiments in mice and on isolated cells of the inner ear, the researchers found that, hours after mice were exposed to loud noise, their inner ear zinc levels spiked. Loud sound exposure causes a robust release of zinc which leads…

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