Hearing Research – Current Insights

Posted: July, 7, 2021

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  Whether you find the San Francisco bridge “hum” soothing, haunting, or downright annoying, you’ll enjoy this interesting engineering case study: “The quest to solve the mysterious ‘eerie’ hum of the Golden Gate Bridge” by Erin McCormick, The Guardian, June 13, 2021.

• For those who follow research on “hidden hearing loss,” see this rare analysis of histologic evidence and corresponding medical records for individuals with lifetime exposures to noise compared to an age-matched control group.  Researchers found evidence of noise-associated inner ear damage that had not yet affected audiometric thresholds, but had resulted in decreased performance on word-identification tests.  Wu PZ, O'Malley JT, de Gruttola V, Liberman MC (2021). Primary Neural Degeneration in Noise-Exposed Human Cochleas: Correlations with Outer Hair Cell Loss and Word-Discrimination Scores. Journal of Neuroscience; 41(20):4439-4447.

• Don’t miss a fascinating summary article in the next issue of NHCA’s Spectrum publication: Carillo et al. (2021 in press). “On the modeling of the objective occlusion effect induced by earplugs: recent advances, challenges and perspectives.” See Spectrum, Vol. 38 (2). The Spectrum is a complimentary benefit of NHCA membership. If you are not yet a member, please click here for more information on who we are, what we do and how to join.