Australian Hearing Hub

Silent disco trivia night
2016-08-15 00:00 (Australia/Sydney)
A short silent disco research event will be held as part of the usual UBar Trivia Competition.
The focus of the study is people’s sound quality preferences.
We provide the tunes and the headphones!
You just fill in a survey, dance and have fun!
Date: Thursday 25 August 2016
Time: 4.30pm – 6.30pm
Location: UBar, Level 2, The Hub, Macquarie University
For questions or RSVP: rikke.sorensen@nal.gov.au

Hear for You, The Butterfly Effect & Goodfellas
2016-08-12 00:00

Objective measures in normal and cochlear implant listeners
2016-08-04 00:00
Speaker: Hamish Innes-Brown
Date: Friday 12 August 2016
Time: 10:00am – 11:00am
Location: Australian Hearing Hub, Level 1, Lecture Theatre
Abstract:
Hamish will talk about two areas of research currently under way at the Bionics Institute in Melbourne: cochlear implant threshold estimation using cortical potentials, and also touch on very recent work in normal-hearing listener looking at brain responses to changes in inter-aural phase.
Stimulation threshold levels for cochlear implants are currently set by manually adjusting current levels for individual electrodes until the patient reports that they perceive sound. This process is time consuming even in healthy adults, and impossible in young children or others who cannot provide verbal responses or follow instructions. For this reason, objective measures that detect stimulus-induced electrical activity generated in the auditory nerve and brainstem are sometimes used (ECAPs, EABRs) to set cochlear implant threshold levels. However, these measures do not correlate well with actual behavioural thresholds. Cortical activity, which may reflect more perceptually-related activity, is therefore a better candidate for objectively fitting cochlear implants. In this study we found strong correlations between cortical responses and behavioural thresholds (r = 0.93), suggesting that the cortical response may be more useful as an objective programming tool for cochlear implants than the auditory nerve response.
Bio:
Hamish Innes-Brown is an NHMRC Early-Career Research Fellow at the Bionics Institute. He has a life-long interest in sensory aspects of sound, vision, and communication. At the Bionics Institute he is using brainwave recordings and perceptual tests to understand and improve the way that sounds are interpreted by people with hearing loss. Perceiving sounds properly is crucial for communication and function in complex social, education, and work environments.

AHH seminar: Evidence in hearing and ENT; trials and beyond. ...
2016-07-25 00:00
Speaker: Professor Anne Schilder
Date: Tuesday 23 August, 2016
Time: 2.30pm – 4.00pm
Location: Australian Hearing Hub, Level 1, Lecture Theatre
Bio: Anne is an ENT surgeon and a trialist. She leads evidENT, a multidisciplinary clinical research team that bridges the University College London Ear Institute’s discovery science and the Royal National Throat Nose and Ear Hospital’s clinical excellence. Her work spans the translational research pathway. Recent successes include an EU Horizon 2020 award for a phase 1/2 trial of local treatment with a Notch inhibitor aimed at restoring hearing in adults with sensorineural hearing loss. And an NIHR award for a 7-year programme of work to determine best management for patients with chronic sinus disease.
Anne is a Professor of Otorhinolaryngology at the UCL Ear Institute and at the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands and practices Paediatric ENT at the UCLH Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital. She is the Joint Co-ordinating Editor for Cochrane ENT and National Lead for the NIHR Clinical Research Network ENT Specialty.
Abstract: Based on Anne’s work in otitis media and hearing she will discuss how randomised controlled trials (RCTs) have answered important clinical questions in hearing and ENT and have generated evidence upon which clinical guidelines and health policies are based. Anne will show how beyond generating data on the effects of treatments, RCTs provide a rich source of socio-demographic and biological data for prognostic and etiologic research.
Throughout the research of her evidENT team they work closely with patients and their families to decide what they will be researching and how. Anne will show how through this approach they have developed the National Research Agenda for ENT, Hearing and Balance which will shape UK research in the field for the next decade.
Who should come: hearing, speech and language researchers and clinicians, cognitive scientists, psychologists, researchers in aging health and health care professionals.
Network: Learn from one another and see what collaboration opportunities are available.
Registration: Entry is free and open to the public. Please email louise.dodd@mq.edu.au to register by 16 August 2016.

Speech intelligibility modelling in noisy rooms
2016-07-18 00:00
Speaker: Dr Mathieu Lavandier, University of Lyon, France
Date: Monday 1 August 2016
Time: 2:00pm – 3:00pm
Location: Australian Hearing Hub, Level 4, National Acoustic Laboratories, Denis Byrne Room

Abstract
Speech intelligibility in noise is improved by having two normally-functioning ears. These two ears allow for spatial release from masking: a noise source is less masking for speech if the target speaker and the noise source are at different positions. The underlying unmasking mechanisms are unfortunately impaired by reverberation, the sound reflections in the room surrounding the sources and listener. If the “noise” source is a competing voice, the listener can rely on other acoustical cues to segregate it from the target voice. Modulations in the temporal envelope of the competing voice allow for a better understanding of the target, the listener benefiting from the temporal “gaps” in the masker to access the target at a better signal-to-noise ratio. Again, reverberation impairs this mechanism by partly filling in the masker gaps. A difference in fundamental frequency between the competing voices can also be used by the listener to improve segregation. These different perceptual mechanisms involved while listening to speech in noisy rooms will be describe through the presentation of an intelligibility prediction model, which will be systematically confronted with behavioural data. This type of model is an interesting tool to investigate speech understanding in cocktail-party situation. One of our aim is to further develop this tool to take into account the influence of hearing impairment and hearing aids in realistic situations.

Bio
Mathieu Lavandier is a senior researcher at the University of Lyon in France and is a visiting associate in the Department of Linguistics at Macquarie University until mid-January. He is based at NAL. His research concerns sound perception in rooms, involving psychoacoustics, room acoustics and speech intelligibility modelling. His visit is partly funded by a visiting research fellowship from the Faculty of Human Sciences.

Celebrating Hearing Awareness Week at Macquarie University Open Day
2016-07-18 00:00

Free music lessons for children with hearing loss
2016-07-18 00:00
We are recruiting children aged 7 to 9 years with:
· cochlear implants AND/OR
· hearing aids

What your child will do:
Play musical apps at home (30 minutes a day, 3 times a week).
Face-to-face group music lessons (6 sessions, once a month) and test sessions (4 sessions, 1 hour each) at Macquarie University.
Duration of study:
6 months (commencing September 2016, or April 2017)
Receive $15 at commencement and completion
Contact: Chi Yhun Lo , chi.lo@mq.edu.au, (02) 9850 81
