Following are a selection of interesting news items from our field. This section will be updated on a continuous basis so check back often in between issues, to see what is new.
Every year CAA honours people who have made significant contributions to the profession of audiology. We invite you to help us identify deserving candidates by submitting nominations for consideration.
The program for the 33rd World Congress of Audiology has been updated with topics for Round Tables and Feature Sessions. CAA co-hosts WCA 2016, which takes place September 18-22, 2016 in beautiful Vancouver, BC. Visit the WCA 2016 website for more details.
In the largest US clinical trial of its kind researchers found that transcranial magnetic stimulation significantly improved tinnitus symptoms for more than half of study participants.
Conventional wisdom has long blamed age-related hearing loss almost entirely on the death of sensory hair cells in the inner ear, but research from neuroscientists has provided new information about the workings of nerve cells that suggests otherwise.
Are wind farms harmful to humans? This controversial topic makes emotions run high. To give the debate more objectivity, an international team of experts dealt with the fundamentals of hearing in the lower limit range of the audible frequency range (i.e., infrasound), but also in the upper limit range (i.e., ultrasound).
Screening method can reduce false-positive hearing results, reducing need for extensive followup tests, family stress, researchers say. In their study, audiologists used high-frequency tympanometry to test middle-ear function in 31 infants between the ages of one week and six months.
Researchers at Yale University School of Medicine conducted a retrospective analysis and found that workers with a history of tinnitus in conjunction with high-frequency hearing loss are more likely to be injured.
Using gene therapy, researchers have restored hearing in mice with a genetic form of deafness. More than 70 different genes are known to cause deafness when mutated. The scientists focused on a gene called TMC1 because it is a common cause of genetic deafness, accounting for 4 to 8 percent of cases, and encodes a protein that plays a central role in hearing, helping convert sound into electrical signals that travel to the brain.
Epilepsy and tinnitus are both caused by overly excitable nerve cells. Healthy nerves have a built-in system that slams on the brakes when they get too excited. The 'brakes' are actually potassium channels that regulate nerve signals. A new drug may treat both conditions by selectively opening potassium channels in the brain.
Auditory melodies can enhance a musician's visual awareness of written music, particularly when the two match, a new experiment shows. That is the conclusion of the latest scientific experiment designed to puzzle out how the brain creates an apparently seamless view of the external world based on the information it receives from the eyes.