Hearing Loss and Music: A Curse and/or a Blessing

By Kathi Mestayer

I’ve always paid a lot of attention to music. When I was a kid, we (mother plus four daughters) would sing on car trips. Occasionally, my father would stealthily sneak his hand behind his ears, switching off his hearing aids. I never told.

As my hearing got worse, though, things got… odd. One day, in the car, singing along with a tune I’d known forever, I noticed a little dissonance. I stopped singing, and listened more closely, finally realizing that I was not singing in tune. I eventually got back in the groove, but it took some effort. The same problem comes up when I strum on the guitar, counting on the chords to give me the starting note. It’s not as easy as it used to be, but if I stick with it, the sweet spot will reveal itself.

Kathi's Flute Pitch

It kept happening, once in awhile. When I finally thought to mention it to my audiologist, she said, “That’s pitch distortion. It’s pretty common in hard-of-hearing people.” Oh, great.

Making Things Up

If only that was the end of it. My imagination has had a field day, too. Once, while the vacuum cleaner was running, I heard it “playing” baroque music. At least it wasn’t hip-hop. And there was the time my husband and I were in a noisy restaurant, with a popular rock song blasting away. “Oh, I love this song!” he said. “Yeah, me, too,” I chimed in. Then we realized that we were each hearing a different song. Guess who was right.

Sforzando!

That’s the musical term for a sudden, forceful attack on a note or chord. Because hearing loss is often accompanied by recruitment (when an unexpected, sudden, noise triggers your startle response and cranks up the perceived volume), sforzando can definitely make it happen.

An example would be when a pianist ends a piece by suddenly hammering down on a chord. It can cause me to utter a startled “ack!” which is audible to both the musician and the audience. As happened a few weeks ago. After the concert ended, I went up to the pianist and confessed. “That was you?” he said.

“Yes,” I explained, “it’s called recruitment, and it’s a symptom of hearing loss. I hope it wasn’t too annoying.”

“Oh, no problem. I’ll take that over somebody in the audience falling asleep any day,” he graciously explained.

So, a happy(ish) ending. That time. It will happen again, undoubtedly. Hearing loss is an adventure, when you like it and when you don’t.

Watch for a related story on how hearing loss affects how music is heard in our Summer issue of Hearing Health magazine.

Subscribe now for your FREE print copy!

Summer Is a Time for Play (and Protection)

By Morgan Leppla

“The best offense is one that does not trigger any defense,” says Daniel Gilbert, Ph.D., a psychology professor at Harvard University.

Gilbert says humans are not hardwired to think long term. When people don’t see a threat as immediate, they are not inclined to take action to mitigate it. This psychological phenomenon is why it’s easy to forego protective measures that’ll make a difference in the long run, especially during one of the most fun-filled times of the year: SUMMER!

With its blaring tunes and crackling fireworks, it makes sense that summer excitement distracts us from remembering the permanent effect of noise on our ears. Loud sounds are more insidious than one might expect. This is in spite of the fact that noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) can happen at any age, to any race, gender, etc. Hearing loss from all causes is a growing epidemic, affecting nearly 50 million Americans.

Sound volume, length of time listening, and repeated exposure to loudness all can lead to NIHL. One extremely loud sound can cause it, but so can exposure to softer (but still dangerous) sounds over an extended period. To put that into tangible terms, a single loud sound may be a shotgun going off right next to you, while sounds that may damage hearing more slowly are repeated exposure to heavy city traffic, music listened to at a high volume using earbuds, or even regular use of a hairdryer!

So, with all of these potential threats to hearing, what is there to do?

Here is the trinity of protection: WALK away from loud sounds, BLOCK loud sounds with ear protection, and TURN the volume down (when you can control it). These simple actions can have a major impact on your long-term hearing health.

Neural sensitivity to binaural cues with bilateral cochlear implants

By Massachusetts Eye and Ear/Harvard Medical School

Many profoundly deaf people wearing cochlear implants (CIs) still face challenges in everyday situations, such as understanding conversations in noise. Even with CIs in both ears, they have difficulty making full use of subtle differences in the sounds reaching the two ears (interaural time difference, [ITD]) to identify where the sound is coming from. This problem is especially acute at the high stimulation rates used in clinical CI processors.

 A team of researchers from Massachusetts Eye and Ear/Harvard Medical School, including past funded Emerging Research Grantee, Yoojin Chung, Ph.D., studied how the neurons in the auditory midbrain encode binaural cues delivered by bilateral CIs in an animal model. They found that the majority of neurons in the auditory midbrain were sensitive to ITDs, however, their sensitivity degraded with increasing pulse rate. This degradation paralleled pulse-rate dependence of perceptual limits in human CI users.

This study provides a better understanding of neural mechanisms underlying the limitation of current clinical bilateral CIs and suggests directions for improvement such as delivering ITD information in low-rate pulse trains.

The full paper was published in The Journal of Neuroscience and is available here. This article was republished with permission of the Massachusetts Eye and Ear/Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Yoojin Chung, Ph.D. was a 2012 and 2013 General Grand Chapter Royal Arch Masons International award recipient through our Emerging Research Grants program. Hearing Health Foundation would like to thank the Royal Arch Masons for their generous contributions to Emerging Research Grantees working in the area of central auditory processing disorders (CAPD). We appreciate their ongoing commitment to funding CAPD research.

We need your help supporting innovative hearing and balance science through our Emerging Research Grants program. Please make a contribution today.

HHF Supporter Alex Mussomeli Selected as Finalist in 2016 Oticon Focus on People Awards

By Oticon

Alex Mussomeli  of Westport is among the outstanding individuals with hearing loss selected as a finalist in 2016 Oticon Focus on People Awards, a national competition that celebrates individuals who are helping to eliminate negative stereotypes of what it means to have a hearing loss.  The soon-to-be sixth grader is one of three outstanding young people selected as a finalist in the Student category.  Beginning June 20, people can cast their vote for Alex at www.oticon.com.  Total number of votes will help determine whether Alex is the first, second or third place winner in the national awards competition. 

Westport News

This is the 18th year that the Oticon Focus on People Awards has honored hearing impaired students, adults and advocacy volunteers who have demonstrated through their accomplishments that hearing loss does not limit a person’s ability to make a positive difference in the world.

Alex, diagnosed with hearing loss as an infant, appreciates the advances in hearing research and technology that have made his life easier and happier. The gifted musician and artist is determined to use his talents so other children with hearing loss can experience the benefits he has enjoyed. He found his inspiration in a legally blind artist who raised $1 million for charities benefiting children through the sale of his paintings.  This April, Alex held his first solo art show to benefit the non-profit Hearing Health Foundation’s Hearing Restoration Project. The young artist worked diligently for a year on the colorful acrylic paintings, prints and notecards that raised a whopping $16,000 for the Foundation.

Website visitors are encouraged to read all of the stories from this year’s 12 finalists in four categories: Student, Adult, Advocacy and Practitioner. 

Voting closes on August 15. Winners will be announced in September.

My Father: My Model in All I Do

By Audra Renyi

Audra with her father

My model in all I do is my father. He is my hero and always will be. He has gone through so much, and never a complaint, he just carries on. I always have my father’s advice to support me in whatever I do. He is very calm and analytical and looks at things from every angle.

Ever since I was little, I knew he had trouble hearing. He grew up in Romania and when he was 9 years old, an ear infection impaired the auditory nerve in both his ears. He wears a hearing aid in his left ear, but needs one in each.

In 1967, my father was working in the engineering department of Volkswagen in Brazil. They were test-driving cars in the state of Mato Grosso. During a night hunt on the Jauru River, a local in my father’s dugout canoe fired his gun right next to my father’s head. For two days afterward, my father could not hear a thing. This only worsened his hearing, of course.

Eventually I will have to persuade him to wear a second hearing aid to improve his stereo perception. Since I dedicated my career to hearing loss five years ago, I started noticing things about my father that I had taken for granted. For instance, he does not hear me as well when the light in a room is dim; I came to realize how much my father lip-reads and how important it is to look at him when I speak.

When he turned 50, he was diagnosed with polycystic kidney disease and had to undergo dialysis in a hospital four times a week. He did receive a kidney transplant but the kidney died after a few years, so he is back on dialysis. Not to worry, it did not manage to slow him down. But I get angry sometimes when nurses at the hospital mumble or do not speak clearly to him. Hospital staff should be trained to communicate clearly with an ever-growing number of older patients with hearing loss. Patients can miss critical information from their health providers, just because they can’t hear.

My brother Aras has also become hard of hearing. He’s an explosives specialist with the Canadian Army who fought in the infantry in Afghanistan. At 32, he will soon need hearing aids to help offset the effect of all those explosions. But there’s no problem hearing him, he’s got the voice of a drill sergeant!

One of the things I learned working with hearing loss around the world is that this invisible disability affects not just the individual but the family as a whole. Not having hearing aids when you need them will cut you off from school and a decent job but it will also affect your parents, siblings, and children.

So it is not a coincidence that when the time comes to buy a hearing aid, the initiative often does not come from the person affected but rather from her parents, his children, or the spouse. They take the person by the hand and drag her/him to the audiology test. People are reluctant to acknowledge that they need a hearing aid, much more so than when they need eyeglasses. And yet, once they are wearing the hearing aid, people just grin with the pleasure of hearing again, and are grateful for having been pushed into wearing it.

One day in Jordan, where our team was working to screen children and provide them with hearing aids, we had just fitted a little boy with his first hearing aid when his father walked in the door and called his name; the boy looked up, saw his father, and burst into tears: He had never heard his father’s voice before. Put simply, that is what motivates me to carry on.

Audra Renyi is the executive director of the Montreal-based World Wide Hearing Foundation International, which provides access to affordable hearing aids and services to children and youth in developing countries. A former investment banker who then worked in Kenya, Rwanda, and Chad for organizations such as Doctors Without Borders, Renyi is also launching her own social enterprise, Hearing Access World, to sell low-cost, high-quality hearing aids.

Brain and Alzheimer's Disease Awareness Month

By Morgan Leppla

Bodies are complex systems, composed of many minute details. The human anatomy serves to remind us of the intricacies of our world. This June for Brain and Alzheimer’s Awareness Month, Hearing Health Foundation (HHF) invites you to join us in celebrating one of the most mysterious and fascinating part of the body: the brain.

For one to grasp the physiological complexity of being  human, one ought to understand how their body’s many systems work in tandem. For example, each person’s brain depends on stimulation to keep it in tip-top shape and and their bodies depend on their brains to function as they are intended to.

This is clearly a stripped down explanation of the role brains play. Of course an organism’s structure can be broken down into smaller and smaller parts, so let’s focus on one of special importance to us here at HHF, hearing.

Frank Lin, M.D., Ph.D., from Johns Hopkins University reports in 2014 that hearing loss affects brain structure, and specifically accelerates brain tissue loss. The study was conducted over a 10-year period with a sampling of people which included those with substantial hearing loss and those with normal hearing.  After analyzing years of magnetic resonance imaging scans, his conclusions suggest people with substantial hearing loss show higher rates of brain atrophy. Lin explains brain shrinkage could be the result of an “‘impoverished’ auditory cortex” since there is reduced brain stimulation in that area.

"If you want to address hearing loss well," Lin says, "you want to do it sooner rather than later. If hearing loss is potentially contributing to these differences we're seeing on an MRI, you want to treat it before these brain structural changes take place."

The human brain contains some of the most challenging biological mysteries in science (and always has). Unlocking those takes perseverance, so HHF thanks brain and hearing researchers for the time and energy devoted to rigorous research and ultimately revealing information critical to improving brain health.

Parts really do affect the health of the whole. So for the brain and beyond, please make an appointment with your hearing healthcare professional for your annual checkup and, if you are diagnosed with a hearing loss, managing it. More than just your hearing will benefit! Untreated hearing loss has been linked to dementia, depression, diabetes, falls, and heart disease.

Want to learn more about brain health? Check out last year’s blog here: Your Brain Is a Muscle: Use It or Lose It

Educating Children with Hearing Loss and Autism Spectrum Disorder

By Eric Sherman

Older Brother, Zach, Cole, and Eric (dad)

Gallaudet Research Institute’s 2009-2010 Annual Survey estimates that about 40 percent of children with hearing loss exhibit another disability and notes the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to be 1 in 59. Early intervention is critical for the development of speech, language, communication skills, and learning. Some families are fortunate to discover their child’s hearing loss at a young age so an early intervention program can be implemented to help their child stay on track with their hearing peers.

What happens when your child is diagnosed with profound to severe hearing loss at 6 months of age, receives his first cochlear implant at age 1½ (second at before his 5th birthday) and spends a couple of years in auditory-verbal therapy (AVT) or speech therapy, but is showing little to no progress?

This was the case with my youngest son. After receiving a second cochlear implant at 1½ and then two years of AVT, my son was nowhere near his hearing peers in communication and language skills. My wife and I knew language development could be a long process, but our gut was telling us that something else was wrong. Our auditory-verbal therapist advised us to seek additional medical evaluations to see if there was something else prohibiting our son’s language development. After having evaluations done, our son at almost 3 years of age was diagnosed on the autism spectrum.

Having a child with hearing loss takes lot of work. Add autism to the mix and it is like trying to solve a puzzle without knowing which pieces are in play.

With intensive behavioral and speech therapy over the years, our son, age 11, has done well. He has become more verbal and can certainly communicate his needs and wants. What is difficult is unlocking the doors into his learning style. There is this blurred line between his autism and hearing disability. When our son has difficulty doing schoolwork, we always question whether he is hearing the information, whether he has a problem processing the information, or whether he is just not interested in the material because it has no real meaning to his everyday life.

Our son has been lucky over the past three years having a teacher who is very creative and skillful in engaging her students. But this has not always been the case. My family’s experiences have taught us that the school district needs more information and training on how to educate a child with both hearing loss and ASD. Service providers need to know how to address each disability individually and collectively understand how they impact a child’s overall education. We have a school audiologist who wanted to create a goal for our son where he tells his aide or teacher when his CI processors are not working. This is a reasonable expectation for a child with hearing loss, but when ASD is added to the mix this may be difficult to achieve.

A child with ASD may have to be taught what it means for their processor not to be working, as well as what to do after they determine they are not working. Furthermore, generalization of whether the processor is “working or not working,” “broken,” or “on or off” may be confusing and difficult to understand. Our son believes his processor is “on” if his headpiece was attached to his head. Also, a child with autism may prefer the silence and not notify anyone their processors are off.

The dual diagnosis of hearing loss and ASD has been documented for the past 20 years; however, research and clinical guidelines on how to find and teach young children with this dual diagnosis are sparse. School professionals and educators need more tools and training to better equip the growing number of children afflicted with ASD and hearing loss. Both Advanced Bionics, which makes cochlear implants, and Illinois State University have done work on this issue, calling attention to the need for better diagnostic tools, early intervention, and training of education professionals. Still, significantly more needs to be done.

Eric Sherman is a father of two boys. In addition to advocating for his son and others, he serves as a parent representative on advisory boards on how special education and family support services are implemented in his local school district. To learn more about Eric Sherman visit ciwear.com/Ourstory/index.html

NEWS UPDATE: Report on Hearing Health Care Released

By Morgan Leppla

Did you know it is estimated that 67 to 86 percent of people who might benefit from hearing aids do not have them? In a much-anticipated National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NAS) report, published on June 2, 2016, NAS addresses the areas of hearing healthcare that currently prevent many of the 48 million Americans with hearing loss from seeking treatment, and provide 12 recommendations for improvement.

The NAS report recognizes that hearing loss detracts from individuals’ participation in family life, school, and work, and can affect anyone, young or old. People deserve the ability to communicate effectively, live healthily, and enjoy a high quality of life.

Specifically, the report recommends “key institutional, technological, and regulatory changes that would enable consumers to find and fully use the appropriate, affordable, high-quality services, technologies, and support they need.”

Currently, hearing healthcare is not focused on the consumer. However, through implementing the report’s recommendations, it would improve:

• The quality and affordability of hearing healthcare

• Access to accurate information that should be readily available to the public

• Increasing the number of options for consumers to choose from, in order to best fit individual needs

• Reducing stigma and bettering education

• Ending governmental measures that create obstacles to easy access

The NAS report further explains that this is everyone’s responsibility to manage their hearing health: Cross-sector, sustained collaboration is crucial to successful implementation of the report’s blueprint.

"Hearing Health Foundation (HHF) recommends everyone talk to their doctors to identify any hearing loss as well as to find the best hearing loss treatment for them. HHF is dedicated to funding research to cure and treat hearing loss and tinnitus  and is proud to play a role in pushing hearing and balance research forward,” says Nadine Dehgan, HHF CEO.

HHF would like to thank the NAS and its expert committee for their hard work in preparing this report, including the committee’s Judy R. Dubno, Ph.D., a member of HHF’s Board of Directors, and Debara L. Tucci, M.D., a member of HHF’s Council of Scientific Trustees. 

HHF's FY'15 Annual Report: Read It Now

By Morgan Leppla

Hearing Health Foundation (HHF) is pleased to announce that our 2015 annual report is now available. From the latest hearing research to how we have worked to fulfill our mission, the report is a comprehensive look at our programs, events, and activities for fiscal year 2015 (Oct 1, 2014 - Sept 30, 2015).

In the report, we review HHF’s progress, talk to supporters, and decode the financials. Here are some highlights:

• Check out the incredible supporters who ran, hiked, and hosted events all to benefit HHF’s mission!

• HHF’s Hearing Restoration Project (HRP) consortium of researchers made notable strides in hearing and tinnitus research. In 2015, the HRP designed a model to test candidate hair cells for regeneration in deafened adult mice, and that’s only a fraction of the story.

  • HRP researchers like Andy Groves, Ph.D., thank you. “Federal funding for biomedical research has decreased by over 20% since 2003, and it shows no sign of increasing any time soon. Your support is critical to help support the skilled young scientists in my lab and to keep the lab afloat,” he says.

• HHF awarded ten Emerging Research Grants (ERGs) to innovative scientists in the areas of Central Auditory Processing Disorder (CAPD), Hyperacusis, Ménière’s Disease, and Tinnitus. Learn more about what they are doing with their research grants.

• See if your name made the donor list. Didn’t see your name...make a gift by Sept 30, 2016, to be listed in fiscal year 2016’s annual report.

• Keep your eye (or ear!) out for hearing-related facts and statistics.

Get all the details in the full report here. We are excited by our progress over the past year and hope you enjoy reading it. As always, have any questions, please email us at info@hhf.org!

Please consider making a gift today so we can continue to carry out our mission and find a cure for hearing loss and tinnitus.

YOU ARE OUR HOPE.

HHF Achieves Accreditation From BBB Wise Giving Alliance

By Morgan Leppla

Accountable, transparent, responsive, and enterprising. 

It takes a resolute organization to embody these traits. While we believe that has been the case since Hearing Health Foundation’s inception in 1958, we now have Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance (BBB WGA) accreditation to prove it!

The BBB WGA evaluates charities based off of 20 holistic standards that include scrutinizing financial transparency and planning, internal governance, effectiveness measurements, and fundraising disclosure practices and accuracy. Check out our profile at Give.org today!

We also recently received a Platinum rating from Guidestar, which is the highest rating available. This rating signifies that HHF yields measurable results using self-defined metrics that reveal much more than oversimplified financial ratios.

But why should this matter to you?

Because these 3rd party ratings show we achieve our mission, responsibly!  

“The public can be assured that every charity evaluation is completed with careful, objective analysis of charity information,” says Art Taylor, president and CEO of the BBB Wise Giving Alliance. “

The more we become deserving of your trust, the better the prospects for curing and preventing hearing loss and tinnitus. More than 80 cents of every dollar goes to funding programs and research, meaning we have the capacity to to enact the changes we promise.

While the BBB seal of approval verifies the standards of our operating procedures described above, our commitment to quality is motivated by a much greater force. It is traceable to our mission and core values, which structure the ways we act and choices we make. Accountability to our constituents and stakeholders is crucial to upstanding practices, and without it we would not be HHF. 

Please consider making a gift today so we can continue to carry out our mission and find a cure for hearing loss and tinnitus. 

YOU ARE OUR HOPE.