[tri-med] FYI - Deaf Children 'Hear' Vibrations

                Deaf Children 'Hear' Vibrations, Brain Scans Show

                CHICAGO (Reuters) - A region of the brain that normally
processes sound is active in
                deaf children feeling vibrations, suggesting the
possibility of a hearing aid that
                converts sound into vibrations, a researcher said
Tuesday.

                Brain scans performed on children born deaf revealed
their brains' auditory cortex was
                active when holding a vibrating plastic tube, while that
area of the brain in subjects with
                intact hearing was not.

                ``Our research suggests this part of the brain is geared
for processing sound-like
                sensations and shows people born deaf can adapt to
'hear' what their fingers feel,''
                said radiologist Dean Shibata of the University of
Washington, who conducted his
                research while at the University of Rochester, New York.

                ``It also suggests there may be great potential in the
use of tactile electronic devices
                which can convert sound energy into vibrational energy
to help deaf children better
                understand speech and hear sound in general,'' he said
in a report to the annual
                meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.

                The hearing aid would involving hooking up a microphone
to a hand-held speaker-like
                vibrator, Shibata said.

                Shibata took magnetic resonance images of the brains of
10 students from the National
                Technical Institute of the Deaf in Rochester and of 11
hearing students from the school
                while each held a plastic pipe that was intermittently
vibrated.

                The brains of both sets of students showed activity in
the perirolandic cortex, where
                the sense of touch is processed, when the pipe was
vibrated. But the deaf students
                also had brain activity in the superior temporal gyri,
where sounds are processed, while
                the hearing students did not.

                The findings reflect the experiences of deaf musicians
who use vibration to play along,
                including world class percussionist Evelyn Glennie who
``listens'' to the other musicians
                through her feet on the floor, Shibata said.

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