Audiology features
Decreased sound tolerance in autism: understanding and distinguishing between hyperacusis, misophonia, and phonophobia
Decreased sound tolerance (DST) affects a significant proportion of autistic people throughout their lifetime and, as Zachary J Williams explains, it is important that clinicians are aware of the three distinct subtypes of DST when making a diagnosis. Autism spectrum...
Hearables: in-ear sensing devices for recording of physiological signals
Colver Ken Howe Ne, Jameel Muzaffar and Manohar Bance discuss the potential of hearable systems to monitor physiological signals (e.g. from brain or heart, blood pressure, body temperature) unobtrusively. Such adaptations require high-quality sensors and sophisticated de-noising signal processing on...
Machine learning to support audiology
Jessica Monaghan and David Allen discuss how machine learning, using a wealth of data provided by hearing devices, can be used to streamline their functionality and fitting. They report on how it has been used to support clinicians to maximise...
Can the audiology clinic benefit from advances in virtual reality?
François Patou discusses how the recent advances in virtual reality technologies can be used to support people living with hearing loss. He outlines some of the novel virtual reality tools that are emerging as resources to support delivery of audiology...
Whale hearing tests through evoked potential audiometry
Covering over 70% of the earth’s surface and reaching known depths of 11km, the world’s oceans tick the box for an extreme environment. What do we know of the impact of environmental noise on the deep-sea dwellers of this habitat?...
Kuduwave™ testing aboard the ISS
What does it take to make an audiometer and tympanometry ready for the space age? In a recent interview, Jillian Scotland and Dirk Koekemoer shared their first-hand experience of getting the Kuduwave ready for a voyage to the ISS. It...
Precision and personalised genomic and epigenomic medicine in audiology/hearing loss
A detailed look at the pathogenesis of acquired hearing loss due to exposure to ototoxicity during pregnancy or shortly after birth. Insights from genomic medicine have shown that, along with environmental factors causing epigenetic alterations, hearing loss may be caused...
SEQaBOO: SEQuencing a Baby for an Optimal Outcome
There are at least 15 countries now running genome sequencing projects. The team in Manchester, UK, and Boston, USA, share their SEQaBOO project. Abstract SEQaBOO (SEQuencing a Baby for an Optimal Outcome) will transform newborn hearing screening (NBHS) by bringing...
Genetics and the newborn hearing screen: the future is now
Eliot Shearer shares the progress being made with newborn hearing screening 60 years on from where it started, and future directions for identifying hearing loss using physiologic, genetic and cCMV screening. Newborn screening had its birth in the early 1960s,...
Innovative approaches to treating deafness
Shahar Taiber and Karen Avraham give us a summary of gene therapies for hearing loss, with an overview of limitations and what the future holds. Hearing loss is the most common sensory disorder. The last two decades have seen a...
100,000 Genomes Project: in conversation with Tess Lopez
For Jul/Aug 2021, ENT & Audiology News features several contributions from the 100,000 Genomes Project, and Tess Lopez very kindly agreed to talk to me about her involvement with the project, as well as sharing her personal experiences of having...
Using tele-audiology in Zambia’s ear and hearing care desert
Addressing the medical desert with tele-audiology and tele-education. If a ‘medical desert’ is defined as a community that lives more than 60 miles away from the nearest acute care hospital, then try to imagine an appropriate term for a situation...
