Our results demonstrate that age-related changes in use of acoustic cues may begin in middle age.

Sponsored content: Created for women and men who care about personal style, H·earrings Cuffs combine hearing technology with the look and feel of a contemporary accessory.

I don’t always think my teammates understand that I have hearing loss. It’s because hearing loss is invisible. But I live with it every moment.

This control experiment shows that the hearing organ must be intact for sound to produce pain-related behavior. This may seem obvious, but it’s important to understand that the pain you experience does not come only from your eardrum or outer ear.

Partial silence/Hours in thought and talk/My dog listened and understood/Time in hours on the old back porch/I was in my own safe, social world.

Patients who started with low wear time and increased it by six months did just as well at one year as those who wore their processor consistently from the start. Patients whose use declined did measurably worse. A slow start is not a verdict.

What changed things was a program almost nobody talks about: state vocational rehabilitation. Every state has a version of this department, just under a different name. The idea behind all of them is the same: If a disability is standing between you and a job, the state will help remove it. Hearing loss counts. Hearing aids count.

Overall our findings suggest that differences in speech-in-noise ability may reflect a combination of early auditory processing, attention, and how strongly the brain represents target speech compared with background noise. 

Cerumen (earwax) moves like a conveyor belt, removing the debris laterally and outward toward the opening of the ear canal where it flakes off. 

Stigma, cost, access. Three people I loved, three different barriers.

When performing, I usually play and sing with a small amplifier, using a microphone for vocals, a jazz banjo, or a vintage arch-top guitar with a pickup. The combination of Ménière’s and tinnitus creates practical challenges onstage.

Diagnosed with central auditory processing disorder as a child, this newly graduated actress-model plans to use her degree in speech-language pathology and audiology to improve outcomes for fellow CAPD patients.

Although it’s one of our most important connections to the world around us, most people don’t routinely monitor changes in their hearing, track exposure to excessive noise, or include hearing screenings as part of their regular preventative care.

With support from an R21 grant from the NIH, Hui Hong, Ph.D., will investigate how the auditory efferent system changes after noise-induced hearing loss and whether those changes help or hinder recovery.

Most people don’t think about protecting their hearing until it’s too late. Every concert, loud commute, and noisy day adds up—and there’s no undo button.

My brain now makes up music with a drone tone mostly in the key of D, pounding rhythms, melodies, and harmonies often in different keys.

When routine checkups missed our daughter’s hearing loss, we realized how families navigating an invisible disability can fall through the cracks. So we started to build the tools to help them.

Eventually I discovered something different: Living with chronic illness is about adapting to a new rhythm with your body. Here’s what I’ve learned.

While you can buy OTC hearing aids without a test, or use free online screening tools, I strongly recommend a comprehensive, in-person exam. A professional evaluation includes a physical inspection of your ears to catch hidden medical issues. 

One of the biggest sources of encouragement during those intense months after getting Shepherd’s diagnosis was hearing the stories of other families who had walked a similar path.

Cochlear implantation (CI) has become an increasingly common audiological solution for children with the most significant degree of unilateral hearing loss—that is, single-sided deafness (SSD)—however, highly variable outcomes are being observed with alarming rates of device nonuse. 

In theory, advanced hearing aid features are laudatory for sure, but what about affordability? Aren’t advances in technology supposed to lower prices, not increase them?

A new study suggests that variants of a single gene may alter inner ear development decades before symptoms begin.

Researchers are developing an organoid-on-a-chip system to model inner ear development and explore how damaged sensory hair cells might be regenerated.

I encourage families to pay attention not only to whether a loved one can “hear,” but whether they are fully participating in life.

When the doctor confirmed I had a hearing loss, I felt like a failure. Years later, my older sister pointed out our mother felt the same way. “How did I miss that?” my mother had wailed.

Music is my passion, and honestly, losing the ability to listen to it would feel like losing my whole heart. Protecting my hearing is such a small habit for something that pays off for the rest of your life.

What I found is that veteran tinnitus is clinically distinct from civilian tinnitus due to the severity of noise exposure and the augmenting effects of post-traumatic stress disorder and blast-induced traumatic brain injury. 

It took 20 years but Les Paul, who was born 111 years ago on June 9, 1915, forever changed music with his invention.

My advice for anyone starting this journey is to make sure that you know your limits so you don’t get into a situation that you can’t handle. Plus, make sure the people you’re interacting with know what you’re going through so they can help.