[msb-alumni] Re: Study: Blindfold could boost hearing
- From: "Marcia Moses" <mgmoses@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <msb-alumni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 7 Feb 2014 12:58:50 -0500
BlankThis is interesting indeed, they did a segment about this study the other
night on All Things Considered.
From: Steve
Sent: Friday, February 07, 2014 12:55 PM
To: msb-alumni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [msb-alumni] Study: Blindfold could boost hearing
This is interesting. In the past, when sighted people claimed my hearing must
be better to compensate for the loss of sight, I denied that. My impression
was that we just were more attentive to what we heard. This article sites some
new research which may very well indicate that their impressions were more spot
on.
Steve
Study: Blindfold could boost hearing By Kim Painter, Special for USA TODAY
People with impaired hearing might someday be able to improve their hearing by
spending time in dark rooms or wearing blindfolds, a study in mice suggests.
The study, published in the journal Neuron, adds evidence that muting one sense
can enhance another, even in adults, say researchers from the University of
Maryland and Johns Hopkins University. The researchers put adult mice with
normal vision and hearing in a completely dark room for a week and found that
they emerged with better hearing. But that wasn't all: Cells in a layer of the
brain devoted to hearing actually changed in ways that enhanced hearing. These
neurons were not previously thought to be changeable in adults. "The fact that
the brain could change this way in adults was not only surprising, but a very
hopeful sign for us," says study co-author Hey-Kyoung Lee, an associate
professor of neuroscience at Johns Hopkins. The mice lost the hearing gains
after a few weeks. So the scientists say they need to see if there's a way to
induce permanent changes -- or to translate the findings to humans. Lee says
she would not recommend putting people in dark rooms for as long as the mice.
But shorter stretches might work, she says. Even if such a technique pans out,
Lee says, it would only enhance sound processing, not create hearing in people
who are completely deaf. So, for example, it might help someone with a new
cochlear implant or hearing aid make better sense of all the new sounds coming
in.
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