Dyslexia: Report on Perceived Link to Deaf Children with Cochlear Implants

Eight year-old Britan and her 10-year-old brother, Carson, have been going to the same summer camp for the past two years. For an entire day, they laugh, play games, eat pizza - and then chat with scientists who literally hang on every word they say.

That’s because Britan, who can hear normally, and Carson, who hears through cochlear implants – artificial ears for deaf people - are part of a study in the speech development laboratory at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center looking at the relationship between hearing and language skills.

Even though cochlear implants have significantly improved the communication abilities of children with hearing loss, many of these children still lag behind their peers in language and literacy development.

For nearly ten years, researchers at Ohio State have been following more than 100 children with normal hearing or hearing loss, some since birth, in order to help find answers that may lead to better implant designs and educational interventions.

Now, researchers say that a surprising picture is beginning to emerge from their studies that could change the way learning problems like dyslexia are detected and treated.

In "Measuring what matters: Effectively predicting language and literacy in children with cochlear implants," published in International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology, the goal of Susan Nittrouer, director of Ohio State’s Speech Development Lab, was to evaluate how well various language measures typically used with very young children after they receive cochlear implants predict language and literacy skills as they enter school.

“We’re beginning to see similarities between the language problems of some children with cochlear implants and the language problems of some children with normal hearing who encounter barriers to language learning,” explained Susan Nittrouer.

“That’s enormously useful information because we know that the actual signal that children with cochlear implants get isn’t nearly as clear as the signal that normal hearing listeners get.

So if language and literacy problems in children with normal hearing are similar to those of deaf children with cochlear implants, maybe the difficulty rests with how they are processing the signal perceptually, even though they have normal sensitivity to sound. That would make sense since language was built on our perceptual capacities.”

With language development, timing is crucial. Most children with dyslexia, a language processing disorder that impacts somewhere between 5 to 20 percent of U.S. children, aren’t usually diagnosed until the third grade. By then, an important window of intervention opportunity has passed.

Ohio State has conducted multiple studies to pinpoint this critical window. Nittrouer’s team has been able to identify some accurate predictors of future language and literacy problems in children with hearing loss by the age of three.

“For example, a deficit in the early comprehension of spoken language is a strong predictor of later reading and writing problems,” said Nittrouer.

“Perhaps we’ll find that the measures of early language skill that we use with toddlers and preschoolers with hearing loss may actually identify children whose learning problems simply haven’t emerged yet. It would be ideal if we could step in earlier, and change the downstream impact.”

In an upcoming publication, Perspectives on Language Learning and Education, by the American Speech, Learning and Hearing Association, an article by Nittrouer suggests that some current theories of language development might need to be reconsidered, noting that the similarity of literacy problems in children with hearing loss and those with language deficits mandates taking a closer look at the role of perception in language development and new intervention approaches.

Read the full article here: HealthNewsDigest.com

In a second article published in Ear and Hearing, "Emergent Literacy in Kindergartners with Cochlear Implants" examined the early or emergent literacy of young cochlear implant recipients.

Middle ear microphone aims to improve cochlear implants

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.

Conventional cochlear implants use an externally worn microphone, speech processor and electromagnetic transmitter, along with an implanted receiver and stimulator that's wired to the auditory nerves.

When sounds are picked up by the microphone and transmitted to the nerves via the internal stimulator, the patient hears.

While it has given hearing to hundreds of thousands of people around the world, this approach still has its drawbacks in terms of practicality, reliability and social perception.

“It’s a disadvantage having all these things attached to the outside” of the head, Young says. “Imagine a child wearing a microphone behind the ear. It causes problems for a lot of activities. Swimming is the main issue. And it’s not convenient to wear these things if they have to wear a helmet.”

While the conventional design doesn't make use of the ear canal and eardrum, Young's device does. It consists of a speech processor and transmitter implanted under the skin of the skull along with an accelerometer and a low-power silicon chip attached to the umbo (the point at which the eardrum connects to the three tiny ear bones).

This enables it to detect vibration of the eardrum (as occurs in normal hearing). From there the system acts like a conventional cochlear implant, transmitting vibrations as electrical signals to electrodes in the cochlea.

The use of an accelerometer rather is a key to the design. Unlike standard microphones that use a diaphragm to detect sound vibrations, the accelerometer won't become clogged by growing tissue when implanted.

There is also a caveat - users would still have to wear a charger behind the ear while asleep to recharge the battery.

Researchers found that the implant works best if the incus (anvil bone) is first removed surgically.

Young says tests in people are about three years away and has created this recording (with output going to a speaker rather than implanted electrodes) to demonstrate the device. Recognize the tune?

The research is published online in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers journal Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

Source: University of Utah

Deaf Woman hears her own voice for the first time - Video

29 year old Sloan Churman was born deaf. She used to read lips up-till now or used hearing aids to a very limited extent.

Two months ago, she received Envoy Medical's Esteem Implant, which utilizes ear drum vibrations to bring hearing back to its users.

Her husband captured her reaction on video. Her reaction was extraordinary and full of joy.

Baby Hears his Mother's Voice for the First Time

For the first eight months of his life, baby Jonathan had never heard the sound of his mom’s voice, but a cochlear implant changed all that. Jonathan’s dad captured the touching moment on video: