Effect of background noise and memory load on listening effort of young adults with and without hearing loss.

Objective: People with hearing loss often encounter difficulties in hearing under adverse conditions, such as listening in the presence of noise. Listening effort is an indicator used to assess listening difficulties in daily life. Although many studies on listening effort have been conducted in recent years, there is a notable gap in the exploration of how task load influences listening effort in young adults.

Binaural integration abilities in bilateral cochlear implant user.

Bilateral Cochlear implants (CIs) improved speech intelligibility, speech perception in background noise, and sound localization in quiet and noisy situations. However, it is unclear whether these advantages essentially result in binaural integration of acoustic stimuli from each ear. In this study, we investigated the effectiveness of binaural integration by bilateral CIs placement using binaural hearing tests and subjective auditory perceptual assessment.

Auditory Evoked Potentials under Active and Passive Hearing Conditions in Adult Cochlear Implant Users.

Objectives: Speech perception abilities, which vary widely among cochlear implant (CI) users, are considered to be associated with the integrity of the central auditory pathways from the auditory nerve to the cortex. Therefore, auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) are used to evaluate central auditory processing, which is thought to contribute to speech perception in CI subjects. In AEPs, the P300 component reflects the cognitive ability of subjects to detect and respond to stimuli and has most frequently been used and investigated in CI subjects.

Syntactic development in Japanese hearing-impaired children.

Objectives: This study examined syntactic development of auditory comprehension of sentences in Japanese-speaking school-age children with and without hearing impairment.

Methods: In total, 592 preschool and school-age children (421 normal-hearing and 171 hearing-impaired) were included in this cross-sectional observation study conducted using the Syntactic Processing Test for Aphasia for Japanese language users. Linear regression analysis was used to determine the estimated age at which each syntactic structure was acquired.

Environmental sound perception in adult patients with cochlear implants: a comparison with central auditory disorders.

The aim of this study is to investigate the perception mechanism of environmental sounds in postlingual patients with cochlear implants compared with that in patients with central auditory disorders. Seventeen postlingual patients with cochlear implants were studied; six patients with auditory nerve disease (auditory neuropathy) and ten patients with cortical deafness were selected for the comparison. A taperecorded environmental sound perception test of 24 environmental sounds was carried out.

Audiological features and mitochondrial DNA sequence in a large family carrying mitochondrial A1555G mutation without use of aminoglycoside.

To elucidate the pathophysiological and genetic mechanisms of hearing loss associated with the homoplasmic mitochondrial A1555G mutation in the absence of aminoglycoside exposure, we conducted audiological and genetic analyses on 67 maternally related members of a large Japanese family carrying this mutation. A consistent pattern was evident in the audiograms, with features of sensory presbycusis, cochlear origin at all levels of hearing loss, and a high degree of vulnerability of outer hair cells. That the degree of hearing loss was similar in affected subjects within the same sibling group but differed between sibling groups suggests the involvement of nuclear modifier genes.

Deafness due to A1555G mitochondrial mutation without use of aminoglycoside.

Objectives/hypothesis: The objective was to clarify the characteristics of deafness associated with the A1555G mutation within mitochondrial 12S ribosomal RNA gene in the absence of aminoglycoside exposure.

Study Design: Clinical and genetic studies in family members with the A1555G mitochondrial mutation were performed.

Methods: The subjects were 123 maternally related members of a large Japanese family with the A1555G mutation.

Postlingual collapse of language and its recovery after cochlear implantation.

A 6-year-old boy lost his normally-developed language ability within 2 months after bilateral sudden peripheral deafness. The boy became non-communicative with others, restless with frequent meaningless bursts of shouts (communication skills equivalent to 9-11 months of language development: a rapid breakdown of language). Since conservative methods were ineffective, cochlear implantation was performed.