I’d like to share four important breakthroughs in hearing research over the past year, and how each also connects back to Hearing Health Foundation, to varying degrees. These major advances offer hope for how we might improve or restore hearing and, by extension, bring a bit more of that wonderful world into everyone’s lives.
Protect Your Ears With HHF’s New PSAs
Hearing Health Foundation is thrilled to launch its newest set of PSAs, “Protect Your Ears,” as part of our ongoing Keep Listening prevention campaign, whose overall goal is to create a culture shift around how we think about healthy hearing.
Balancing Noise Reduction With Speech Perception in Hearing Aids
Our research aims to better understand the underlying biological mechanisms of such variability and pave the way for a more personalized and effective hearing aid technology, offering hope for those struggling in noisy listening environments.
Stay Safe and Sound This Fourth of July
Independence Day is a celebration of our country’s birthday, and we’re so grateful for the service of our active members of the military and veterans—who are, as we know, disproportionately affected by hearing loss and tinnitus. But now evidence is emerging of additional, severe brain injuries affecting service members.
Sound Encoding in the Auditory Midbrain
While individual neurons in the auditory midbrain may not accurately convey information about sound features, the collective activity of these neurons accurately represents sounds.
Putting the Brakes on Hyperactivity in the Brain
The road to more effective, less invasive, and faster developing treatments for tinnitus and loudness hyperacusis lies in focusing on the brain and not the ear.
Understanding Pain Signals Triggered by Damage to the Inner Ear
Of relevance to hyperacusis, prior noise-induced hearing loss leads to the generation of prolonged and repetitive activity in type II neurons and surrounding tissues. This aberrant signaling may be the basis for the sensitivity to everyday sounds seen in hyperacusis.
Surprising Role of Auditory Neurons in Learning Revealed by Study in Mice
These findings suggest that the auditory cortex may transmit significant non-auditory signals relevant for learning-related plasticity.
How Neurons in the Brain Coordinate Movement and Prevent Falls
Activity by special neurons called unipolar brush cells reveals that they may introduce delays or increase the length of firing responses, and presumably extend vestibular sensory representations.
Changes in the Brain with Age and Hearing Loss
A better understanding of how our brains process patterns with aging and hearing loss, and when neural responses are exaggerated versus diminished, can aid in developing treatments and devices to improve age- and hearing loss-related hearing difficulties.