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How We Hear

Hair Cells are critical to hearing; they're also the components that are generally the cause of what is normally called sensorineural hearing loss.

An important component of how we hear is the auditory processing done by our brain.

September 2007 - True Identity of Pivotal Hearing Structure Is Revealed

September 2007 - Scientists Identify Important Sound Processing Region of Brain

September 2007 - How Your Brain Focuses on Certain Sounds

October 2007 - The acute effects of alcohol on auditory thresholds

October 2007 - Scientists discover new hearing mechanism

October 2007 - Good Hearing Dooms Young Loiterers

November 2007 - Non-nerve cells key for development of hearing

December 2007 - Rutgers Discovery Offer Potential for Improved Cochlear Implants

December 2007 - New Brain Mechanism Identified For Interpreting Speech

December 2007 - Hearing Chemicals More Complicated Than Scientists Thought

January 2008 - Human auditory neurons more sensitive than those of other mammals

January 2008 - How the Auditory Cortex Processes Sound

February 2008 - New findings contradict a prevailing belief about the inner ear

February 2008 - Mammalian Protein Helps Calibrate Hearing

March 2008 - How We Follow a Single Conversation in a Noisy Room

April 2008 - Humans have more distinctive hearing than animals

May 2008 - Study links low-frequency hearing to shape of the cochlea

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Scientists Identify Important Sound Processing Region of Brain

September 2007

While the visual regions of the brain have been intensively mapped, many important regions for auditory processing remain "uncharted territory." Now, researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and elsewhere have identified a region responsible for a key auditory process-perceiving "sound space," the location of sounds, even when the listener is not concentrating on those sounds. The findings settle a controversy in earlier studies that failed to establish the auditory region, called the planum temporale, as responsible for perception of auditory space by default.  Full Story

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How Your Brain Focuses on Certain Sounds

September 2007

On September 19, a research report by Helsinki University of Technology, Laboratory of Computational Engineering scientists appeared in the online, open-access journal PLoS ONE (Public Library of Science), showing that selective attention increases both gain and feature selectivity of the human auditory cortex. The ability to select task-relevant sounds for awareness, while ignoring irrelevant ones, constitutes one of the most fundamental of human faculties, but the underlying neural mechanisms have remained elusive. While most of the literature explains the neural basis of selective attention by means of an increase in neural gain, a number of papers propose enhancement in neural selectivity as an alternative or a complementary mechanism.  Full Story

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The acute effects of alcohol on auditory thresholds

October 2007

There is very little knowledge about alcohol-induced hearing loss. Alcohol consumption and tolerance to loud noise is a well observed phenomenon as seen in the Western world where parties get noisier by the hour as the evening matures. This leads to increase in the referrals to the "hearing aid clinic" and the diagnosis of "cocktail party deafness" which may not necessarily be only due to presbyacusis or noise-induced hearing loss.   Full Story

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Good Hearing Dooms Young Loiterers

October 2007

The mosquito is no longer just a blood-sucking pest -- it is also the name of an ultra-sonic teenage deterrent system that is being introduced to the Regina market. Using a high-frequency tone, the device annoys youths and deters them from loitering and being in its general vicinity within minutes of activation. It has been used in the United Kingdom since 2005 and is now being implemented in Canadian markets, such as Vancouver, and it might make its debut in Saskatchewan very soon. "It is currently being used at convenience stores, schools, pubs, and malls," Michael Gibson of Moving Sound Technologies said Friday from Vancouver. "Store owners are using the devices to get kids that are hanging out in front of stores and (hurting business) to leave the storefront." Gibson said his company has installed these devices in four locations of a large convenience store chain in Vancouver and Victoria that had unwanted traffic. He said store patrons simply weren't going into the store because they didn't want to encounter unwanted people hanging around outside.  Full Story

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Non-nerve cells key for development of hearing

November 2007

New research indicates that non-nerve cells play a critical role in stimulating auditory nerve firing in the absence of sound, in preparation for the development of hearing.  "It was known that this 'spontaneous' activity helps auditory nerves make proper connections with other nerve cells in the brain, which enables the accurate encoding of sound; however, the trigger that initiates this activity was not known," senior author Dr. Dwight E. Bergles told Reuters Health. "We discovered that non-nerve cells in the developing inner ear stimulate electrical activity in nerves that carry sound information from the ear to the brain." Dr. Bergles, from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, said the discovery that non-nerve cells were involved in the initial stimulatory activity was particularly surprising since it had been thought that these cells were merely bystanders.   Full Story

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Hearing Chemicals More Complicated Than Scientists Thought

December 2007

While neurotrophins have historically been prized for the survival value they impart to nerve cells, the researchers found that in the cochlea they do a great deal more. Their presence in relative proportions transforms the spiral ganglion neurons into either fast-firing transmitters to carry high-pitched sound messages to the brain, or slow-firing carriers for the transmission of lower pitched signals. The neurotrophins accomplish this at the molecular level by tightly regulating a newly defined and complex series of signaling proteins. Davis explained that one end of the cochlea is home to the slower-firing neurons characterized by a preponderance of NT-3, while the other cochlear end is rich in BDNF, making those neurons faster-firing. Both neurotrophins are present in gradients throughout the range, but at any specific locale their amounts vary relative to each other - lots of BDNF and a little NT-3 in the high frequency transmitters, for example, and the reverse as you move toward the other end.  Full Story