To reach their findings, recently published online in the journal NeuroImage, the research team analyzed 126 participants aged between 56 and 86 years for up to a 10-year period.

During this time, participants were required to undergo yearly magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans for their brain changes to be tracked.

At the baseline of the study, subjects also underwent physical examinations, including hearing tests. At this point, 71 participants had normal hearing, while 51 had impaired hearing with a minimum loss of 25 decibels.

Hearing impairment ‘shrinks brain faster’
After analyzing all MRIs that had been conducted over the years, the investigators found that participants who had impaired hearing at the baseline of the study experienced brain atrophy – brain shrinkage – at a faster rate, compared with subjects who had normal hearing.

Researchers found that hearing loss in older adults may be associated with faster brain shrinkage and increased brain tissue loss.
Participants with impaired hearing also lost at least an extra cubic centimeter more of brain tissue every year, compared with those who had normal hearing.

Additionally, the investigators found that impaired hearing was linked to increased brain shrinkage in certain areas, including the superior, middle and inferior temporal gyri. These are brain structures that play a part in processing speech and sound.

But Frank Lin, of the schools of medicine and public health at Johns Hopkins University and lead author of the study, says it is not surprising that these particular brain structures were affected.

He explains that because people with hearing loss tend to use speech and sound less, brain structures linked to these processes are more likely to shrink due to lack of stimulation.

However, Lin notes that the middle and inferior temporal gyri are also associated with memory and cognition, and research has shown that these areas of the brain play a part in the early stages of mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease.

Address hearing loss ‘sooner rather than later’
According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), approximately 36 million American adults report some degree of hearing loss.

Lin says their findings emphasize the importance of treating hearing loss as early as possible, adding:

“Our results suggest that hearing loss could be another ‘hit’ on the brain in many ways.

If you want to address hearing loss well, you want to do it sooner rather than later. If hearing loss is potentially contributing to these differences we’re seeing on MRI, you want to treat it before these brain structural changes take place.”

The investigators say that further studies are warranted to investigate whether treating hearing loss early may reduce the risk of associated health issues.

Last year, Medical News Today reported on a study suggesting that musical training in early childhood may have a positive effect on how the brain processes sound later in life.

The post As we age, our brain becomes smaller appeared first on Hearing Health.

On March 31, they hope to change that with the introduction of Halo™, a Made for iPhone® hearing aid engineered to be compatible with iPhone, iPad® and iPod touch®.

Sold under the Starkey brand name, Halo combines Starkey Hearing Technologies’ superior hearing technology with iOS to deliver a revolutionary solution that makes every aspect of life better – from conversations to phone calls to listening to music. Halo will connect with the TruLink™ Hearing Control app, which is available as a free download in the App Store.

Together, Halo and TruLink deliver the most personalized hearing experience ever, and are designed to:

+Stream calls from your iPhone directly to your hearing aids using Bluetooth® 4.0 wireless technology
+Use your iPhone remotely to control your hearing aids
+Deliver pristine sound and exceptional listening clarity
+Help you hear comfortably in noise
+Eliminate buzzing and whistling
+Stream FaceTime®, music and more directly to your hearing aid

In addition to seamless integration with iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, Halo hearing aids are also stand-alone hearing aids packed with Starkey Hearing Technologies’ best-in-class performance features including feedback cancellation, adaptive noise management and directionality.

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Traditional hearing aids work well for people with varying degrees of hearing loss, but they can’t restore sound to people who are profoundly deaf. Cochlear implants work better in people with more severe ear damage because they bypass the damaged parts of the ear and send the sound information — as electrical signals — directly to the auditory nerve. Cochlear implants can be used alone or with traditional hearing aids in people who have mild hearing loss at some frequencies but more severe hearing loss at other frequencies.

The cochlear implant is made up of two main systems: an external system and an internal system. The external system is composed of three parts: a sound processor, a microphone and a transmitter. The internal system features a receiver and an electrode array.

The microphone, which is attached to the sound processor, captures sound and sends it to the sound processor, a small device that can be inconspicuously clipped over the outer ear. The transmitter sits behind the sound processor and connects to the scalp directly outside where the internal receiver is implanted under the skin. The transmitter is fitted with a magnet that holds it onto the internal receiver. (Instead of being fastened to the scalp and ear, the external system can also be carried in a shirt pocket or hip pouch.) The receiver, which is about the size of a quarter, is implanted under the skin in the bone behind the ear. And the electrode array is a wire that runs from the implant into the cochlea.

The microphone picks up sound and sends it to the sound processor, which translates sound into digital information. It sends this digital information to the implanted receiver, which changes the digital information into electrical signals and sends these signals to the electrode array. The electrode array sends these signals to the auditory nerve, which then passes along the signals to the brain.

New Hearing Aids

New bone-anchored (baha) hearing aids bypass the normal hearing process to help people with severe sensorineural, conductive or mixed hearing loss who can’t be helped by regular hearing aids. Instead of merely amplifying sound, these surgically implanted devices attach to the bones in the middle ear. Bypassing the auditory canal and middle ear, baha hearing aids create vibrations in the skull and transmit those vibrations directly to the cochlea through a process called direct bone conduction.

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Some people pass on hearing aids because of the cost, while others do so because they are embarrassed to be seen wearing them. What they don’t realize is that many hearing aids are relatively inexpensive, and many of today’s hearing aid styles are so small that they are nearly impossible to spot.

In this article, we’ll find out exactly how hearing aids work, and learn about new technologies that are providing clearer, more natural sound for people with hearing loss. But first, let’s look at what causes hearing loss.

What Causes Hearing Loss?

When you listen to something, whether it is a car alarm or a dog barking, the sound travels through the opening of your outer ear and causes your eardrum to vibrate. Three small bones in your middle ear carry this vibration to the cochlea — the shell-shaped structure in your inner ear. The vibration stimulates hair cells, which create an electrical current in the auditory nerve. This current transmits the sound via nerve impulses to your brain, where it is processed into noise, like the sound of a car alarm or that of a dog barking.

People lose hearing in one of two ways: ­

Conductive hearing loss occurs when sound doesn’t move as it should through the eardrum, ear canal or the three bones of the inner ear. It can be caused by earwax, a punctured eardrum, fluid in the ear, a genetic defect or an infection. The result is a sensation as though your ears are plugged. Conductive hearing loss can be treated with surgery.

Sensorineural hearing loss involves damage to the cochlea. It’s the most common type, affecting about 90 percent of people with hearing loss. Sensorineural hearing loss can be a byproduct of aging, or it can occur due to infections, genes, ­head trauma, exposure to loud noises or fluid buildup in the inner ear. This is the type of hearing loss that a hearing aid can help.

The post Hearing Loss and Hearing Aids appeared first on Hearing Health.

Noise, not age is the leading cause of hearing loss. Unless you take steps now to protect to your ears, sooner or later many of you — and your children — will have difficulty understanding even ordinary speech. Millions of Canadian, already have permanent hearing loss caused by the everyday noise that we take for granted as a fact of life.

“The sad truth is that many of us are responsible for our own hearing loss.”

While there are myriad regulations to protect people who work in noisy environments, there are relatively few governing repeated exposure to noise outside the workplace: portable music devices, rock concerts, hair dryers, sirens, lawn mowers, leaf blowers, vacuum cleaners, car alarms and countless other sources.

The ears are fragile instruments. When sound waves enter the ear, they cause the eardrum to vibrate. The vibrations are transmitted to the cochlea, in the inner ear, where fluid carries them to neatly organized rows of hair cells. These in turn stimulate auditory nerve fibers, each attuned to a different frequency. These impulses travel via the auditory nerve to the brain, where they are interpreted as, say, words, music or an approaching vehicle.

Damage to this delicate apparatus results from both volume and length of exposure to sound. Very loud noises, or chronic exposure to sound even when it is not particularly loud, can wreak havoc on hair cells, causing them to become disarranged and to degenerate.

We are born with a fixed number of hair cells; once they are dead, they cannot be replaced, and auditory sensitivity is permanently lost. Usually, sensitivity to high-frequency sounds is first to go, followed by an inability to hear the frequencies of speech.

Sound volume is measured in decibels (dB), and the level at which noise can cause permanent hearing loss begins at about 85 dB, typical of a hair dryer, food processor or kitchen blender.

But even noisier than many of these is the maximum output of some portable music players, which can exceed occupational safety levels and produce sound levels in the ear on a par with that of a jet taking off. If you listen to music with earbuds or headphones at levels that block out normal discourse, you are in effect dealing lethal blows to the hair cells in your ears.

In general, if other people can hear what you’re listening to, the volume is turned up too high. Many times I’ve had to change my seat on the subway or bus because the rider next to me was using a music player as if it were a boombox.

Some portable listening devices come with the ability to set a maximum volume, which may be worth the added cost to parents concerned about protecting their children’s ears.

At a given volume level, earbuds deliver higher noise levels than over-the-ear headphones. If earbuds are used. Alternatively, when you are alone and not at risk of missing important environmental cues, like an approaching vehicle, consider using noise-canceling over-the-ear headphones that block out background noise and enable you to listen at a lower volume.

The post What Causes Hearing Loss appeared first on Hearing Health.