Volume 23, Issue 3 - Special issue: Israeli Society for Auditory Research (ISAR): 2012 Annual Conference: Guest Editors: Haim Sohmer, Karen B. Avraham

High-throughput sequencing is changing the face of genetic diagnosis and counseling. While in the past, it would take on average 1 to 5 years to identify a mutation leading to deafness, today, the genetic basis for deafness can be determined within months in a child or adult with inherited hearing loss. Obstacles and challenges still remain, but the field is changing at a dramatic rate, making gene discovery a much easier and more efficient task than in the past.

Background: Auditory sensation can be elicited not only by air conduction (AC) with an earphone and by bone conduction by applying a bone vibrator to bony sites on the head, but also by a newly described mode based on applying the bone vibrator to soft tissue sites on the head, neck, and thorax (soft tissue conduction – STC). This study was designed to assess whether it is necessary to compress the skin at the STC sites, which could induce vibrations of the underlying bone. Methods: In 15 normal-hearing subjects, thresholds were assessed with the bone vibrator in air (control for possible AC), direct contact of the bone vibrator with the mastoid and regions around the lip, and indirect contact (via a cotton wool wick, dry or wet) of the bone vibrator with sites around the lip. Results: Even though the best (lowest) thresholds were obtained with direct contact, the subjects clearly heard the sound stimulation when presented only by the gentle contact of the wick with the skin, especially when the contact site was moist. Conclusions: STC stimulation does not require vibrations of the skull bone and seems to involve the transmission of auditory frequency vibrations, through a series of soft tissues, to the inner ear.

Background: Audiologists mapping in the clinic report that many cochlear-implanted teenagers and their parents complain of deterioration in hearing capabilities. The aim of this study was to compare the mapping parameters measured over the years and determine whether more changes occurred throughout adolescence than during childhood. Methods: The files of 23 cochlear-implanted teenagers were studied retrospectively. Data were collected for each individual at several time points between the ages of 6.5 and 18.25 years. Typical data collected from the mapping sessions included behaviorally measured T values, impedance results, audiogram thresholds in the free field with the implant, speech reception threshold, and speech perception of vowel-consonant-vowel syllables. Results: No changes were found in either the behavioral or the objective parameters over the years. Conclusions: The stability in mapping and audiometric measurements found in adolescence do not support an explanation based on hormonal and growth effects on implant function. Perhaps a more likely cause of the subjective sense of hearing deterioration is related to changes in social and educational requirements.

The hypothesis that different subcomponents of auditory working memory are differentially related to early reading skills was tested in 63 Hebrew speaking 4-year-old children, using a battery of early reading (phonological processing and familiarity with written language) and memory (simple and complex spans) tasks. Complex spans accounted for significant amounts of variance on both facets of early reading even after the contribution of simple spans was accounted for. These findings suggest that the unique contribution of complex working memory to early reading can be identified as early as preschool and that the structure of correlations between reading and memory is similar across ages.

No abstract available.

No abstract available.