Articles

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…

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…

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…

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.…

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…

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…

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…