Improved tactile speech perception and noise robustness using audio-to-tactile sensory substitution with amplitude envelope expansion.

Recent advances in haptic technology could allow haptic hearing aids, which convert audio to tactile stimulation, to become viable for supporting people with hearing loss. A tactile vocoder strategy for audio-to-tactile conversion, which exploits these advances, has recently shown significant promise. In this strategy, the amplitude envelope is extracted from several audio frequency bands and used to modulate the amplitude of a set of vibro-tactile tones.

Longitudinal urinary neopterin is associated with hearing threshold change over time in independent older adults.

Low-grade chronic inflammation is associated with many age-related conditions. Non-invasive methods to monitor low-grade chronic inflammation may improve the management of older people at risk of poorer outcomes. This longitudinal cohort study has determined baseline inflammation using neopterin volatility in monthly urine samples of 45 independent older adults (aged 65-75 years).

Improved tactile speech robustness to background noise with a dual-path recurrent neural network noise-reduction method.

Many people with hearing loss struggle to understand speech in noisy environments, making noise robustness critical for hearing-assistive devices. Recently developed haptic hearing aids, which convert audio to vibration, can improve speech-in-noise performance for cochlear implant (CI) users and assist those unable to access hearing-assistive devices. They are typically body-worn rather than head-mounted, allowing additional space for batteries and microprocessors, and so can deploy more sophisticated noise-reduction techniques.

Improved tactile speech perception using audio-to-tactile sensory substitution with formant frequency focusing.

Haptic hearing aids, which provide speech information through tactile stimulation, could substantially improve outcomes for both cochlear implant users and for those unable to access cochlear implants. Recent advances in wide-band haptic actuator technology have made new audio-to-tactile conversion strategies viable for wearable devices. One such strategy filters the audio into eight frequency bands, which are evenly distributed across the speech frequency range.

Improving speech perception for hearing-impaired listeners using audio-to-tactile sensory substitution with multiple frequency channels.

Cochlear implants (CIs) have revolutionised treatment of hearing loss, but large populations globally cannot access them either because of disorders that prevent implantation or because they are expensive and require specialist surgery. Recent technology developments mean that haptic aids, which transmit speech through vibration, could offer a viable low-cost, non-invasive alternative. One important development is that compact haptic actuators can now deliver intense stimulation across multiple frequencies.

Macrophages in the cochlea; an immunological link between risk factors and progressive hearing loss.

Macrophages are abundant in the cochlea; however, their role in hearing loss is not well understood. Insults to the cochlea, such as noise or insertion of a cochlear implant, cause an inflammatory response, which includes activation of tissue-resident macrophages. Activation is characterized by changes in macrophage morphology, mediator expression, and distribution.

Electro-Haptic Stimulation: A New Approach for Improving Cochlear-Implant Listening.

Cochlear implants (CIs) have been remarkably successful at restoring speech perception for severely to profoundly deaf individuals. Despite their success, several limitations remain, particularly in CI users' ability to understand speech in noisy environments, locate sound sources, and enjoy music. A new multimodal approach has been proposed that uses haptic stimulation to provide sound information that is poorly transmitted by the implant.

Inflammation at the Tissue-Electrode Interface in a Case of Rapid Deterioration in Hearing Performance Leading to Explant After Cochlear Implantation.

Objective: The reasons for soft failure after cochlear implantation require investigation. This study proposes a method to study and characterize the tissue response to the array in a case of soft failure in a person undergoing reimplantation.

Case: The woman in her 50s, with an underlying autoimmune condition, received a cochlear implant using hearing preservation technique after developing profound hearing loss more than 2 kHz with a moderate loss of less than 500 Hz over a 10-year period.

Exploiting Routine Clinical Measures to Inform Strategies for Better Hearing Performance in Cochlear Implant Users.

Neuroprostheses designed to interface with the nervous system to replace injured or missing senses can significantly improve a patient's quality of life. The challenge remains to provide implants that operate optimally over several decades. Changes in the implant-tissue interface may precede performance problems.

A Music-Related Quality of Life Measure to Guide Music Rehabilitation for Adult Cochlear Implant Users.

Purpose: A music-related quality of life (MuRQoL) questionnaire was developed for the evaluation of music rehabilitation for adult cochlear implant (CI) users. The present studies were aimed at refinement and validation.

Method: Twenty-four experts reviewed the MuRQoL items for face validity.

Modelling the effect of round window stiffness on residual hearing after cochlear implantation.

Preservation of residual hearing after cochlear implantation is now considered an important goal of surgery. However, studies indicate an average post-operative hearing loss of around 20 dB at low frequencies. One factor which may contribute to post-operative hearing loss, but which has received little attention in the literature to date, is the increased stiffness of the round window, due to the physical presence of the cochlear implant, and to its subsequent thickening or to bone growth around it.

Perception of the pitch and naturalness of popular music by cochlear implant users.

Objectives: To assess the perceived pitch and naturalness of popular music by cochlear implant (CI) users.

Methods: Eleven experienced post-lingually deafened adult CI users rated the pitch, naturalness, and clarity of a popular song with 10 frequency allocation settings, including the default. The alternative settings all had logarithmic frequency spacing and frequency shifts of less than one octave compared with the default map.

Optimizing frequency-to-electrode allocation for individual cochlear implant users.

Individual adjustment of frequency-to-electrode assignment in cochlear implants (CIs) may potentially improve speech perception outcomes. Twelve adult CI users were recruited for an experiment, in which frequency maps were adjusted using insertion angles estimated from post-operative x rays; results were analyzed for ten participants with good quality x rays. The allocations were a mapping to the Greenwood function, a compressed map limited to the area containing spiral ganglion (SG) cells, a reduced frequency range map (RFR), and participants' clinical maps.

Markers of inflammatory status are associated with hearing threshold in older people: findings from the Hertfordshire Ageing Study.

Background: Age-related hearing loss is a common disabling condition but its causes are not well understood and the role of inflammation as an influencing factor has received little consideration in the literature.

Objective: To investigate the association between inflammatory markers and hearing in community-dwelling older men and women.

Design: Cross-sectional analysis within a cohort study.

Auditory localization abilities in bilateral cochlear implant recipients.

Objective: To quantify binaural advantage for auditory localization in the horizontal plane by bilateral cochlear implant (CI) recipients. Also, to determine whether the use of dual microphones with one implant improves localization.

Methods: Twenty subjects from the UK multicenter trial of bilateral cochlear implantation with Nucleus 24 K/M device were recruited.