Effortful listening is mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausting. Learn how it affects the brain—and what to do about it.

If you’ve been diagnosed with a hearing loss, get more opinions. Tell your audiologist you want the telecoil so that when a venue or house of worship has a hearing loop installed.

Our data showed that introducing the mutated nicotinic receptor into otherwise healthy ears can prevent, to some extent, permanent auditory damage caused by loud noise and accelerate hearing recovery.

Earpieces and earbuds, by design, channel sound directly into your ear canal. While this ensures clarity in communication, it also increases the risk of overexposure to harmful noise levels.

Dogs, like human beings, need social interaction and the company of others. That’s important for people with hearing loss to remember. So as challenging as it may be, it’s important that we stay connected and try to communicate.

My hearing aids are not left in a drawer or only worn for selected occasions. I love them. The TV can be a reasonable volume, I can engage in the subtleties of conversation. I don't miss the punch line of jokes.

Les Paul persisted to refine the design for a solid body electric guitar, create multiple gold records, invent today’s recording techniques, be inducted into multiple halls of fame, and play his guitar until two months before he died at 94 years old in August 2009.

What I have discovered is that unlike many other disabilities and chronic conditions, there are no anthologies or collections of personal stories published in book form about hyperacusis. So by publishing this book, I hope to develop greater awareness and understanding about hyperacusis.

Eventually I told my boss that I would have to resign. As it turns out, that was the best decision I could have made. The enormous stress of my job had been a large contributing factor to the severity of my disease, and letting that responsibility go was decidedly the medicine I needed. 

New products from Williams Sound and LG join the list of Auracast-enabled devices.

I’ve approached hearing loss with humor over the years and I try to normalize hearing aids in my professional life. They're nothing to be embarrassed about. In fact, they’re essential tools that keep us engaged with the world.

As a person with hearing loss, you can alert the airline to this at the point of booking, or before you fly. This is usually covered in a special assistance section of the booking, or you can email the airline and let them know. 

After years playing water polo without my hearing aids because it’s a must, I’ve figured out my own game. I’ve got my own tricks.

Understanding the multiple mechanisms behind how aminoglycoside antibiotics are able to kill hair cells may provide new potential therapeutic avenues to make these important drugs safer. 

It has now been 13 years since my vestibular neurectomy, and it ended up being the best decision I ever made for my Ménière’s. I’m back to a somewhat normal life, although I’ve lost about 80 percent of the hearing in my right ear and have high pitched tinnitus in the same ear 24/7. 

When I was obtaining my doctorate in audiology, I started noticing some telltale signs of hearing loss when talking to my grandmother.

We can now treat otoferlin-related hearing loss. In the next 10 years, we will continue to reach more groups with specific causes of hearing loss—momentum that will help accelerate the process for everyone.

My firsthand experience with hearing, speech, and language development challenges, both personally and as a parent, helped shape my writing.

Our information is based on evidence-based research studies and scholarly articles that support the adverse effects of both intense and chronic high and low frequency noises on our hearing. 

There has been a lot of news lately—in the hearing health space—that we want to highlight, from dementia research to ways to alleviate motion sickness and improve speech comprehension.

The brain may help regulate the ear’s sensitivity to sound and compensate for hearing loss by sending signals to the cochlea, a structure in the inner ear. This discovery could pave the way for new treatments for challenging hearing disorders such as hyperacusis and tinnitus.

As a clinician and university professor, I’ve worked with hundreds of people who hesitated to seek help—not because they couldn’t afford it, or didn’t have access to care, but because doing so meant admitting something they weren’t ready to accept: that something fundamental had changed.

This indicates an extended timeline of auditory development in children, which has exciting scientific and clinical implications.

These findings provide essential insights into hearing loss, related perceptions, and strategies to enhance awareness and promote conversations about hearing health.

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.

After the marriage he confided to my mom that he had developed a mild to moderate sound intolerance from frequent loud exposures in his construction job, from bulldozers, claw hammers, jackhammers, etc.

George Arthur Gates, M.D., the inaugural medical director of Hearing Health Foundation’s Hearing Restoration Project (HRP), passed away on February 8, 2025.

In audiology, we describe listening environments using the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The signal is what you want to hear—like your conversation partner—and noise is everything you don’t want to hear.

As someone hard of hearing, I intimately understand the challenges of a world not always designed for me. This drives my mission to advocate for better access and representation.

While significant challenges remain, ongoing efforts in genetic research, immunology, and clinical trials offer hope for better management and potential cures for Ménière’s disease in the future.