Hearing Aid

It’s so obvious when you think about it. The iPhone has a microphone, a computer that can process audio, and earphones – why not use it as hearing aid? That’s just what a group of scientists from the University of Essex have done, with their BioAid app. It has the potential to replace thousand-dollar hearing aids with a free download ... as long as users don’t mind keeping their phone close at hand.  Read More

There may soon be help for people who have been rendered functionally deaf by problems of the middle ear. Researchers from Sweden’s Chalmers University of Technology have developed an implant that bypasses the defective middle ear, transmitting sounds to the inner ear by sending vibrations right through the skull bone.  Read More

Our ears work by converting the vibrations of the eardrum into electrochemical signals that can be interpreted by the brain. The current for those signals is supplied by an ion-filled chamber deep within the inner ear – it’s essentially a natural battery. Scientists are now looking at using that battery to power devices that could be implanted in the ear, without affecting the recipient’s hearing.  Read More

U.S researchers are developing a tiny middle ear "microphone" that could remove the need for any external components on cochlear implants. Led by University of Utah engineer Darrin J. Young, the research team has produced and tested a prototype of the device which uses an accelerometer attached to the tiny bones of the middle ear to detect sound vibration.  Read More

When a tailor is making an item of custom-fit clothing, they first take the client’s measurements, then adjust a mannequin known as a tailor’s dummy, to match those measurements. That way, as they’re making the clothing, they can check the fit on the dummy, instead of repeatedly bringing in the actual client. When it comes to hearing aids, however, clients often need to pay follow-up visits to the hearing clinic, in order to get the device adjusted so it suits their particular type of hearing loss. Recently, though, a team from the University of Essex have developed software that creates virtual “hearing dummies.” These could allow for hearing aids to be tailor-made for each client’s needs, right from the start.  Read More

It’s no big secret that wearing in-ear devices, such as stereo earphones or hearing aids, can cause the ears to hurt over time. According to the engineers at Colorado’s Asius Technologies, however, this isn’t due simply to a poor fit or high volume levels. Instead, it’s caused by an “acoustic reflex,” that no amount of earbud-reshaping or decreases in volume will alleviate. There are reportedly ways of minimizing or even eliminating what’s known as “listener fatigue,” though – these include a flexible membrane, and even an inflatable ear-tip device created by Asius.  Read More

If you had to use a commuting bicycle in a race, you would probably set about removing the kickstand, fenders, racks and lights to make the thing as fast and efficient as possible. When engineers at Houston’s Rice University are developing small, fast, energy-efficient chips for use in devices like hearing aids, it turns out they do pretty much the same thing. The removal of portions of circuits that aren’t essential to the task at hand is known as “probabilistic pruning,” and it results in chips that are twice as fast, use half the power, and are half the size of conventional chips.  Read More

According to United Nations’ World Health Organization, there are approximately 278 million people worldwide suffering from moderate to profound hearing loss. It is not surprising that many of those people have particular difficulty with telephone communications and programs through the Internet. When telephone conversations are conducted via computer networks using the Internet Protocol, ambient noise and acoustic echoes often impede the conversation. For the hearing impaired, it is especially problematic - most of the time they need to increase the volume to try and follow the conversation. However, by doing so, the background noises are also intensified and signal frequencies become virtually intolerable. In response to this growing problem, developers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology IDMT in Oldenburg have come up with a digital solution.  Read More

It’s become an accepted fact of life that people tend to lose much of their hearing as they get old. This is because our hair cells, the cells in our ears which allow us to hear, cannot regenerate - we’re born with 30,000 per ear, but once they die off or get damaged, they’re gone for good. Stefan Heller, a professor of otolaryngology (ear, nose and throat stuff) at Stanford University, wants to change that. To that end, he recently succeeded in creating mouse hair cells in a petri dish. Could an end to deafness be far behind?  Read More