Post-Menopausal Hormonal Changes and Processing of Auditory Information
Could the hormonal changes associated with menopause affect a woman’s ability to process auditory information?
Trott et al (2019) compared performance on tests of central auditory function between 14 pre-menopausal women (mean age = 30 years) and 14 peri- or post-menopausal women (mean age = 54 years). All subject had pure-tone hearing thresholds of 25 dB HL or better at 500, 1000, 2000, and 4000 Hz in both of the ears.
Are We Breaking the World’s Most Powerful Pair of Glasses?
Have you seen the movie "Finding Dory"? In one of the many exciting sequences, the protagonist Dory needs the help of Bailey the beluga whale to navigate through a maze of pipes. In a later, and even more exciting sequence, Bailey helps Dory keep track of a moving truck in which Dory's friends Nemo and Merlin inadvertently became captured.
A recent area of research is exploring the application of auditory brainstem response (ABR) testing in identification of autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
Currently, ASD is typically diagnosed between the ages of 2 and 4 years. Earlier identification may allow for implementation of intervention at critical time periods of development. A review of the literature suggests that children with ASD often exhibit prolonged ABR latencies compared to controls, but there are several studies that do not support this relationship.
Sleep Apnea and Hearing Loss: Is There a Relationship?
Do you suffer from sleep apnea? Know someone who does? See patients who do? If you said "yes" to any of these questions, you might be interested in a soon-to-be-published article by Matsumura and colleagues titled Evaluation of Peripheral Auditory Pathways and Brainstem in Obstructive Sleep Apnea.
Intervention for children with auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder (ANSD) represents a significant challenge in pediatric audiology. A critical tool for the fitting of amplification in young pediatric patients, the auditory brainstem response (ABR), is compromised in this population for estimation of behavioral thresholds. Despite compromised ABR responses, cortical auditory evoked potentials (CAEP) can often be recorded from ANSD patients, and there is emerging research in the application of CAEP for estimation of behavioral thresholds in this population (He et al. 2013).
Konrad-Martin et al (2015) report that diabetes mellitus (DM) is a metabolic syndrome affecting one-twelfth of all American adults. Of note, they report that Type 2 DM affects 1 of every 4 to 5 v veterans receiving care at the Veterans Health Administration. (Note that Type 1 DM is less common, Type 2 is the more common and accounts for some 90-95 percent of all diabetes in U.S. adults. See Am Fam Physician. 2010 81(7):863-870.) The authors note that multiple reports suggest hearing loss is (very likely) a disabling complication of DM.
