What we hear can affect how we work | Marketplace from American Public Media.
This is an interview I did with Kai Ryssdal on Marketplace yesterday. You can hear the show or read the transcript. Let me know your thoughts on how sounds in your work environment effect your productivity.
Use it or lose it, we are all familiar with this adage. It is true for the body and true for the brain.
Without sufficient sensory stimulation a child’s brain does not develop as it should. Nor does an adult brain maintain full functionality as a result of negative plasticity. The auditory system thrives with the right input and suffers if deprived of sound or overstimulated by noise.
A new study by researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania shows that declines in hearing ability may accelerate gray mater atrophy in auditory areas of the brain and increase the listening effort necessary for older adults to successfully comprehend speech.
Hearing aids can be an effective intervention. Another approach to consider is music listening therapy. This is neuroauditory training to improve sound brain fitness in part by stimulating the frequency bands where the deficits exist with specially modified music. There has been good success helping people with mild hearing loss through the use of The Listening Program®. In many cases listeners no longer require hearing aids, because they trained their brain to better understand what it hears (auditory processing).
Many audiologists will share that when patients with mild hearing loss wear hearing aids for a period of time that their auditory discrimination improves on tests without the hearing aids. This is due to the brain now being able to perceive the auditory signal through sound amplification. The increased signal is enough to improve brain processing. In my opinion, a course of The Listening Program should be considered prior to using hearing aids in cases of mild hearing loss, and definitely needs to be used along with hearing aids. This is something proactive that can be done to stimulate the brain so people can continue to enjoy the richness that exists within the sounds of our loved ones voices, music, and nature.
Read more about this study published in the Journal of Neuroscience here.
If you play an instrument, this should be music to your ears: According to a new study in Psychology and Aging, lifelong musicians experience fewer age-related hearing problems than non-musicians.
Read more of my interview with Madeline Haller in Men’s Health.
A new study reveals that music activities can improve communication in toddlers who have received cochlear implants.
Some infants who are born with impaired hearing and who cannot benefit from hearing aids are likely to gain 90% normal hearing ability by undergoing a cochlear implantation procedure. Following the operation, however, the child — who never heard before — undergoes a long rehabilitation process before he or she can begin to speak.
In the present study, Dr. Dikla Kerem of the University of Haifa examined the particular effects that music therapy has on the potential development of toddlers (aged 2-3 years) who have undergone cochlear implantation, specifically in terms of improving spontaneous communication.
“Music comprises various elements that are also components of language and therefore as a non-verbal form of communication is suitable for communication with these children, when they are still unable to use language. Communicative interactions, especially those initiated by the toddlers, are critical in the development of normal communication, as they are prerequisites for developing and acquiring language,” explains Dr. Kerem. She adds that the toddlers undergoing rehabilitation are under much pressure from their surroundings — especially the parents — to begin talking, and sometimes this pressure makes them become introverted. As such, music therapy lends itself to strengthening these children’s nonverbal communication and thereby lessens the pressure on them for verbal exchange and response.[1]
Music can serve to open up the auditory receptivity of these children, lowering their defenses and providing an opportunity to gradually process and understand the components of sound that make up receptive and expressive language. It is a way into a fragile system in need of gentle stimulation and support.
Read the full article.
Scientists at the University of Rochester have discovered that the hormone estrogen plays a pivotal role in how the brain processes sounds.
The findings, published in the May 5 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience, show for the first time that a sex hormone can directly affect auditory function, and point toward the possibility that estrogen controls other types of sensory processing as well. Understanding how estrogen changes the brain’s response to sound, say the authors, might open the door to new ways of treating hearing deficiencies.
Of particular interest is that estrogen modulates the gain of auditory neurons. This finding could be a critical to the successful treatment of sound discrimination problems and hypersensitivity to sounds in the future.
