Binaural

OBJECTIVE: To determine the benefits of binaural hearing rehabilitation in patients with monaural conductive or mixed hearing loss treated with a unilateral bone conduction implant (BCI). METHODS: This monocentric study includes 7 patients with monaural conductive or mixed hearing loss who underwent surgical implantation of a unilateral BCI (Bonebridge, Med-El). An ITA Matrix test was performed by each patient included in the study - without and with the BCI and in three different settings - to determine the summation effect, squelch effect and head shadow effect...

OBJECTIVE: The current study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of delta frequency binaural beats stimulation in treatment of individuals with tinnitus having normal hearing sensitivity. METHOD: Twenty-four individuals who reported bothersome tinnitus in the presence of clinically normal hearing were grouped into two (I and II). The group was provided with delta frequency binaural beats and II was provided with white noise stimulation (both of 20 min duration) for 30 days...

Binaural beat (BB) has been investigated as a potential modality to enhance sleep quality. In this study, we introduce a new form of BB, referred to as dynamic BB (DBB), which incorporates dynamically changing carrier frequency differences between the left and right ears. Specifically, the carrier frequency of the right ear varied between 100 and 103 Hz over a period, while the left ear remained fixed at 100 Hz, yielding a frequency difference range of 0 to 3 Hz. The objective of this study was to examine the effect of DBB on sleep quality...

Nowadays there are multiple ways to perceive music, from attending concerts (live) to listening to recorded music through headphones (medial). In between there are many mixed modes, such as playback performances. In empirical music research, this plurality of performance forms has so far found little recognition. Until now no measuring instrument has existed that could adequately capture the differences in perception and aesthetic judgment. The purpose of our empirical investigation was to capture all dimensions relevant to such an assessment...

BACKGROUND: Auditory neuropathy (AN) is a hearing disorder that affects neural activity in the VIIIth cranial nerve and central auditory pathways. Progressive forms have been reported in a number of neurodegenerative diseases and may occur as a result of both the deafferentiation and desynchronisation of neuronal processes. The purpose of this study was to describe changes in auditory function over time in a patient with axonal neuropathy and to explore the effect of auditory intervention...

Background/Objective: Bilaterally implanted cochlear implant (CI) users do not consistently have access to interaural time differences (ITDs). ITDs are crucial for restoring the ability to localize sounds and understand speech in noisy environments. Lack of access to ITDs is partly due to lack of communication between clinical processors across the ears and partly because processors must use relatively high rates of stimulation to encode envelope information. Speech understanding is best at higher stimulation rates, but sensitivity to ITDs in the timing of pulses is best at low stimulation rates...

In recent years, headphones have become increasingly popular worldwide. There are numerous models on the market today, varying in technical characteristics and offering different listening experiences. This article presents an application for simulating the sound response of specific headphone models by physically wearing others. In the future, for example, this application could help to guide people who already own a pair of headphones during the decision-making process of purchasing a new headphone model...

Despite the proven effectiveness of cochlear implant (CI) in the hearing restoration of deaf or hard-of-hearing (DHH) children, to date, extreme variability in verbal working memory (VWM) abilities is observed in both unilateral and bilateral CI user children (CIs). Although clinical experience has long observed deficits in this fundamental executive function in CIs, the cause to date is still unknown. Here, we have set out to investigate differences in brain functioning regarding the impact of monaural and binaural listening in CIs compared with normal hearing (NH) peers during a three-level difficulty n-back task undertaken in two sensory modalities (auditory and visual)...

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to explore potential differences in suprathreshold auditory function among native and nonnative speakers of English as a function of age. METHOD: Retrospective analyses were performed on three large data sets containing suprathreshold auditory tests completed by 5,572 participants who were self-identified native and nonnative speakers of English between the ages of 18-65 years, including a binaural tone detection test, a digit identification test, and a sentence recognition test...

PURPOSE: The current study was taken up to estimate the prevalence of Single Sided Deafness (SSD) in a tertiary healthcare hospital in Mumbai. Also to determine the acceptance of Contralateral routing of offside signal (CROS) devices by individuals with SSD. METHOD: A retrospective study design was followed to collect data from September 2020 to September 2022. The data were collected by reviewing the files of the cases diagnosed with Single-Sided Deafness in a tertiary health care hospital in Mumbai...

BACKGROUND: Many older adults residing in long-term care often face issues like poor sleep, reduced vitality, and depression. Non-pharmacological approaches, specifically Binaural Beat Music (BBM) and Rhythmic Photic Stimulation (RPS), may alleviate these symptoms, yet their efficacy in this demographic has not been extensively explored. AIMS: This study investigated the effects of combined BBM and RPS interventions on sleep quality, vitality, and depression among older residents with depressive symptoms in long-term care facilities...

Bilateral cochlear implants (BiCIs) result in several benefits, including improvements in speech understanding in noise and sound source localization. However, the benefit bilateral implants provide among recipients varies considerably across individuals. Here we consider one of the reasons for this variability: difference in hearing function between the two ears, that is, interaural asymmetry. Thus far, investigations of interaural asymmetry have been highly specialized within various research areas. The goal of this review is to integrate these studies in one place, motivating future research in the area of interaural asymmetry...

BACKGROUND: Binaural hearing enables better speech comprehension in noisy environments and is necessary for acoustic spatial orientation. This study investigates speech discrimination in noise with separated signal sources and measures sound localization. The aim was to study characteristics and reproducibility of two selected measurement techniques which seem to be suitable for description of the aforementioned aspects of binaural hearing. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Speech reception thresholds (SRT) in noise and test-retest reliability were collected from 55 normal-hearing adults for a spatial setup of loudspeakers with angles of ± 45° and ± 90° using the Oldenburg sentence test...

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study is to assess whether patient participation in specific activities and perceived social support correlate with speech perception following cochlear implantation. SETTING: Tertiary referral hospital. METHODS: Adult cochlear implantation patients implanted in their poorer hearing ear between January 2019 and December 2020 completed the Functional Social Support Questionnaire (FSSQ) and a modified version of the Victoria Lifestyle Study-Activities Lifestyle Questionnaire (VLS-ALQ)...

OBJECTIVE: Unilateral hearing loss (UHL) in children is associated with speech and language delays. Cochlear implantation (CI) is currently the only rehabilitative option that restores binaural hearing. This study aims to describe auditory outcomes in children who underwent CI for UHL and to determine the association between duration of hearing loss and auditory outcomes. STUDY DESIGN: Retrospective case series. SETTING: Three tertiary-level, academic institutions...

INTRODUCTION: Auditory brainstem response (ABR) is the gold standard for hearing testing in dogs. ABR is commonly used in puppies to diagnose congenital sensorineural deafness. Long test times limit the use for a more comprehensive hearing screening in veterinary practice. This study aimed to establish a super-fast hearing screening protocol in dogs. METHODS: Hearing thresholds were routinely measured with a mobile device designed for newborn hearing screening in 90 dogs...

OBJECTIVES: To study habituation disorders in auditory middle latency response (AMLR) to repetitive stimuli of persistent postural-perceptual dizziness (PPPD) patients. SUBJECTS: Twenty-eight PPPD (10 men and 18 women, mean 59.5 years of age, 26-81 years of age) were enrolled. For comparison, data of 13 definite vestibular migraine (VM) patients (3 men, 10 women, mean age 45.5), 13 definite unilateral Meniere's disease (MD) patients (2 men, 11 women, mean age 50...

Acute ischemic stroke, characterized by a localized reduction in blood flow to specific areas of the brain, has been shown to affect binaural auditory perception. In a previous study conducted during the acute phase of ischemic stroke, two tasks of binaural hearing were performed: binaural tone-in-noise detection, and lateralization of stimuli with interaural time- or level differences. Various lesion-specific, as well as individual, differences in binaural performance between patients in the acute phase of stroke and a control group were demonstrated...

According to the arousal-mood hypothesis, changes in arousal and mood when exposed to auditory stimulation underlie the detrimental effects or improvements in cognitive performance. Findings supporting or against this hypothesis are, however, often based on subjective ratings of arousal rather than autonomic/physiological indices of arousal. To assess the arousal-mood hypothesis, we carried out a systematic review of the literature on 31 studies investigating cardiac, electrodermal, and pupillometry measures when exposed to different types of auditory stimulation (music, ambient noise, white noise, and binaural beats) in relation to cognitive performance...

INTRODUCTION: Cochlear implantation is the standard treatment for severe to profound hearing loss. While cochlear implant (CI) users can communicate effectively in quiet environments, speech understanding in noise remains challenging. Bimodal hearing, combining a CI in one ear and a hearing aid (HA) in the other, has shown advantages over unilateral electrical hearing, especially for speech understanding in noisy conditions. Beamforming is a technique used to improve speech understanding in noise by detecting sound direction and enhancing frontal (speech) sounds while attenuating background noise...