The quality of audio influences whether you believe what you hear

USC: Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see,” Edgar Allen Poe once wrote. Maybe he just had a bad phone connection. A new study by USC and the Australian National University shows that audio quality influences whether people believe what they hear — and whether they trust the source of information. The findings are significant amid the recent rise of fake news and public distrust in science, said Norbert Schwarz, a co-director of the Mind & Society Center at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

UK Physiologists Discover Molecular Mechanism for Stabilizing Inner Ear Cells, with Implications for Hearing Loss

Kentucky: Mechanosensory hair cells in the inner ear pick up the softest sounds, such as whispers and distant noises. Unlike other cells in the human body, these sensory cells are fragile and finite. At birth, the human ear contains approximately 15,000 of these cells. They do not regenerate or divide and, therefore are susceptible to permanent damage from exposure to loud sounds. Scientists believe understanding the molecular mechanisms that maintain the structure of these cells throughout the lifespan can provide insight into the fundamental causes of hearing loss and deafness.

Gene therapy restores hearing

Nature: Delivering a functional gene to the ears of mice with a genetic hearing disorder allows them to detect sound. People with Usher syndrome type I have genetic mutations that cause deafness in childhood, progressive blindness and balance disorders. Gwenaëlle Géléoc at Boston Children's Hospital in Massachusetts and her colleagues studied newborn mice with a form of Usher syndrome type I. They injected a synthetic virus that carried a healthy version of the gene for a protein called harmonin into the animals' ears. The protein resides in sound-sensitive 'hair' cells of the inner ear and helps to transmit auditory signals to the brain. The team found that mice given the gene responded to sounds as quiet as whispers, similarly to normal mice. The treated mice also performed as well in balance tests as normal mice.
In another study, Luk Vandenberghe at the Schepens Eye Research Institute of Massachusetts Eye and Ear in Boston and his colleagues found that the same virus delivered genes to a large number of the target hair cells in the mouse ear.
Nature Biotechnol. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nbt.3801; http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nbt.3781 (2017)

Improved gene therapy restores hearing, balance in preclinical tests

Harvard: In the summer of 2015, a team at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital reported restoring rudimentary hearing in genetically deaf mice using gene therapy.  Now the researchers report restoring a much higher level of hearing—down to 25 decibels, the equivalent of a whisper—using an improved gene therapy vector developed at Massachusetts Eye and Ear. The new vector and the studies are described in two back-to-back papers in Nature Biotechnology, published online Feb. 6.

Hearing health linked to a good diet

Florida: Although the old wives’ tale about carrots being good for your eyesight has been debunked, University of Florida researchers have found a link between healthy eating and another of your five senses: hearing. UF Health researcher Christopher Spankovich examined the eating habits of participants in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. In previous work, Spankovich found that the higher a person scored on the Healthy Eating Index, a part of the survey, the better his or her auditory function.
Spankovich examined data from 2,366 people. In addition to answering questionnaires about their health during the original survey, participants were given a four-part hearing test. When Spankovich analyzed the data, he found a strong connection among diet, hearing and noise exposure.

How the brain balances hearing between our ears

UNSW researchers have answered the longstanding question of how the brain balances hearing between our ears, which is essential for localising sound, hearing in noisy conditions and for protection from noise damage.
The landmark animal study also provides new insight into hearing loss and is likely to improve cochlear implants and hearing aids. The findings of the NHMRC-funded research are published today in the prestigious journal Nature Communications.