Hearing Impaired

Research led by the University of Arizona may have uncovered a new potential treatment target for tinnitus – not the ears but within the brain itself. The study suggests that neuroinflammation is to blame, and could be a new way to fix the problem.

Once we lose the sensory hair cells in the cochlea, they’re gone for good. But now researchers have found a way to regrow them in mice, potentially paving the way for more effective hearing loss treatments in humans.

A team of Swedish researchers have discovered three new types of neurons, which help carry auditory signals from the ear to the brain and may hold the secrets to treating hearing disorders like tinnitus.

As any new parent will quickly confirm, the sound of a crying baby can communicate a multitude of things, from "I'm hungry", to "I'm in pain". A team at UCLA has now developed an innovative app that can identify when a baby is crying and help decode what they're trying to communicate.

A small Australian company is hoping to blow multi-thousand-dollar prescription hearing aids out of the water. This US$449 pair of over-the-counter, Bluetooth hearing augmentation earbuds can test and adjust to your hearing, connect to your phone, and separate voices from background noise.

This device could be what millions of people worldwide have been waiting for – an effective treatment for tinnitus. Human trials have shown precisely timed sounds and weak electrical pulses delivered by the device can reduce or even eliminate that ringing in your ears.

A team from the University of Antwerp is developing a robotic sign language interpreter. The first version of the robot hand, named Project Aslan, is mostly 3D-printed and can translate text into fingerspelling gestures.

​Lip-reading is an inexact science, with motoring mouths making it hard to attribute sounds to each individual movement. Computer scientists at Oxford University have teamed up with Google's DeepMind to develop artificial intelligence that might give the hearing impaired a helping hand.

In an effort to further open the lines of communication for people with hearing and speech disabilities, a university student in London is developing a smart glove that converts sign language into text and spoken dialogue.

For people with limited hearing, understanding movies or plays can be challenging. That's why engineers at Germany's Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technolgy have developed a system that streams audio from the stage or screen to the user's earphone-equipped smartphone.

In order to regain their sense of hearing, many deaf people currently opt for cochlear implants. Such devices are expensive, however, plus they must be surgically installed. That's why researchers are developing an electric retainer that transmits spoken words to the user by buzzing their tongue.

Google Glass hasn't exactly set the world on fire, but that doesn't mean it doesn't still have some cool potential uses. Today Glass has two big new apps: one that can turn it into a life-changing tool for the hearing-impaired, and another that, erm, helps movie theaters sell tickets.