Two eminent auditory scientists were jointly awarded “The Brain Prize 2012” in March.

The Grete Lundbeck European Brain Research Foundation conferred the honor upon Christine Petit, Ph.D., of the Institut Pasteur and College de France, Paris and Karen Steel, Ph.D., of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Instutite, Cambridge, UK “for their unique, world-leading contributions to our understanding of the genetic regulation of the development and function of the ear, and for elucidating the causes of many of the hundreds of inherited forms of deafness.”

These two researchers lead the international auditory research community in investigations of hereditary deafness. Dr. Petit analyzes the genetics of deaf patients and their families, then investigates identified genes in animal models. Dr. Steel has comprehensively studied genetic auditory mutations and their functional consequences in mice.

A few years ago, Mrs. Fox, the President of NOHR, had the honor and privilege of visiting Dr. Steel in her wonderful laboratory.

Professor Colin Blakemore, Oxford University, Chairman of the Selection Committee said: “Together, the work of these two European Scientists illustrates the value and power of interdisciplinary approaches in neuroscience, and the way in which cutting-edge fundamental research is needed to understand complex clinical problems and to accelerate benefit for patients.”

Age-Related Hearing Loss: A Research Imperative (excerpted from Lin F: Hearing Loss in Older Adults: Who’s Listening? JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Assocation, March 21, 2012)

Although the onset of age-related hearing loss (ARHL) is often subtle, the broader consequences of hearing loss in older adults are now beginning to surface in epidemiologic studies. Those consequence are not subtle. ARHL has been found to be independently associated with poorer cognitive functioning and incident dementia, such that compared with individuals with normal hearing, those with mild, moderate, and severe hearing loss had a 2-, 3-, and 5-fold increased risk of developing dementia, respectively. The specific mechanisms underlying this association are unknown but may be related to the effects of hearing loss on cortical processing, increasing cognitive load, and social isolation, non–mutually exclusive pathways that can trigger cascading downstream effects of hearing loss on the health and functioning of older adults.

The current criterion standard for hearing health care is focused on clinic-based audiologic evaluation and follow-up appointments for hearing aid fitting and adjustments,
a model of care that remains inaccessible to all but the most motivated of patients. Community-based interventions are needed to ensure that older adults are able to integrate and apply hearing technologies in their daily lives. The role of other alternative models of hearing health care delivery (eg, through self-fitting of hearing aids), while generally frowned upon by hearing professionals because of concerns about improper programming, also deserves thorough consideration.

In many cases, however, even adequate counseling, rehabilitative training, and properly fitted hearing aids are not enough. The most advanced hearing aids will still preferentially amplify whichever sounds are loudest and closest—useful in some situations but disadvantageous in many others, particularly those where people are gathered in an echo-filled environment with multiple talkers (eg, listening to a minister in a church or to overhead announcements in an airport).

The effects of treating hearing loss in older adults remains poorly understood. Only one randomized controlled trial of hearing aids has investigated outcomes beyond quality of life. This moderately sized randomized controlled trial of veterans, performed more than 20 years ago, demonstrated positive effects of hearing aids on cognition and other functional domains at 4 months posttreatment. Trials incorporating more representative cohorts and technology (eg, digital hearing aids, cochlear implants), observing patients for several years, and providing reports of the effects of hearing rehabilitation on cognitive and social functioning have not been performed. From a clinical standpoint, determining whether treating hearing loss could affect outcomes critical to public health such as delaying cognitive decline and dementia remains the most salient question at hand and will never be answered with observational epidemiologic studies. In addition, a mandate to include hearing rehabilitative services and devices as essential health benefits in federal health care legislation (thereby opening the door to insurance coverage) will likely only come with results from definitive trials.

Future research initiatives for ARHL need to address fundamental questions pertaining to hearing loss and public health that remain unanswered: what are the consequences of untreated hearing loss in older adults, how can effective hearing rehabilitative interventions be delivered in the community, and how does treating hearing loss affect outcomes critical to older adults and society? These questions cut across the disciplines of audiology, otolaryngology, and geriatrics/gerontology—disciplines that historically have operated within distinct cultures and silos of thinking. Answering these basic questions will, therefore, require research initiatives that span the interface of these fields and that can foster collaboration between auditory and gerontological researchers across multiple research areas (eg, understanding the biology of aging in the cochlea, conducting epidemiologic studies of hearing loss in older adults, developing communitybased approaches to hearing loss rehabilitation, and conducting clinical trials).

As a society with a rapidly aging population, implementing innovative strategies to promote successful aging in older adults is a public health, economic, and moral imperative. Concerted and interdisciplinary public health and research initiatives joining physicians, audiologists, gerontologists, public health researchers, and community advocates to study and treat hearing loss in older adults could potentially have substantial implications for society and the health of older adults—a message to which everyone needs to listen.

NOISE IMPACTS US ALL!

An excellent article about noise, hearing and overall health was featured in the Wall Street Journal recently. I strongly encourage you to read it at– online.wsj.com. The title is “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Unsafe,” by A.J. Jacobs.

A fascinating article about regenerative biology was published in the Fall 2011 issue of “Catalyst–Biological Discovery in Woods Hole (Massachusetts),” the Marine Biological Laboratory. The title is: “To Regenerate or Not? That is the Question.” It concerns recovery and restoration of function of spinal cord cells after damage in the lamprey. The following link to the magazine can be pasted into your browser:

www.mbl.edu/publications/catalyst/pdf/catalyst_fall11.pdf

Arielle created an online community for deaf and hard of hearing teens.

This link can be pasted into your browser:

http://www.glamour.com/sex-love-life/blogs/smitten/2011/11/meet-our-21-amazing-young-wome.html.

NOHR had the most wonderful Children’s Tea last week. 140 people showed up: children, parents, grandparents and from what my emails tell me, all came away satisfied and happy campers.

The children made it fun for all to see what they wore. Everything from party clothes to Halloween costumes to ballet skirts to red sequined shoes!The jackets came off the boys quickly as they got into the party mood.

Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer, Grammy winners, kept the children happy, moving and singing, The Merion Cricket Club in Haverford, PA kept the platters full of delectable tea sandwiches and desserts.

Will we do it again? Maybe. Write and tell us what kind of NOHR party you’d like to go to and support.

Hearing loss from noise was stressed by informational placemats (which the children colored and took home). One side was pictures of things that make “soft sounds,” the other side was pictures of things that make “loud sounds,” all designed by one of our co-chairs, Katy Friedland. Caroline Linz, our other co-chair, arranged for the music and the venue.

One of our posters, designed by Elliott Curson, Philadelphia advertising executive, showed a charming picture of a wide-eyed little girl, saying “Shhh, Keep It Down. Protect Your Hearing!” Other “Stop Noise” posters came from The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD).

IN MEMORIAM

I was very saddened and shocked to read that a beloved co-worker, Rosemary Davis, has died at the age of 64 of complications from breast cancer: a great loss to family, friends and co-workers. Rosemary and I worked closely together when I was lobbying in Washington, D.C. for a separate Deafness Institute at NIH in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. She was bright, funny and a great support to me. We often traveled to Washington, D.C. together, where she charmed Congress with her great personality, brains and beautiful angelic face, framed by blonde curls. She was both organized and serious. We had a goal—and we worked hard together to attain it. She was my “leveler” and my work day was brightened when she was at the office. ‘Special’ doesn’t adequately describe her. Those who wish to read about her illustrious career can do so on the Philadelphia Inquirer Obituary page, Sunday October 9, 2011.
I will miss her terribly.
Geraldine D. Fox

“The Power of Open Captioning,” by Mark Blankenship
from “TDF (Theatre Development Fund) Stages: A Theatre Magazine”
at–http://wp.tdf.org/index.php/2011/08/the-power-of-open-captioning/

The link above can be pasted into your browser.

Caitlin Parton is a law student at the City University of New York who spent her early twenties interning with a U.S. senator. She’s also a lifelong theatregoer, and the theatre is richer because of bright, passionate fans like her. Not that long ago, however, the theatre wasn’t very accommodating to Parton or the hundreds of audiences members like her.

Parton, 26, identifies as deaf, and though a cochlear implant gives her partial hearing, she still hears less than most people. When she was young, that seriously hindered her theatregoing.

“My mother is an actress and her father was a Broadway producer, so I grew up having an appreciation of the performing arts and attending Broadway performances with my mom,” she recalls. “I would enjoy them, but she would sit next to me and mouth what people were saying so that I could lip read when I missed it. We would watch movies of musicals before we would go to see the production, so I’d be familiar with it, but there would just be so much that I would be missing.”

Audience members like Parton inspired Theatre Development Fund’s open captioning initiative. Part of TDF’s Accessibility Programs, open captioning displays electronic text on a screen that sits near the stage during a performance. That lets audiences read what actors are saying or singing and see descriptions of important sound effects.

Parton was in the audience for TDF’s very first open captioned performance in 1997: The Broadway play Barrymore starring Christopher Plummer. “I just remember being wrapped up in it and following every line of dialogue,” she says. “I remember Christopher Plummer being a tour de force in it, and it was just amazing to not have to turn to ask ‘What did he just say?’ I was right there with everybody else.”

Since then, Parton has seen dozens of open captioned performances in New York, but the service exists in many other cities. Some theatres mount open captioned performances on their own, and some get support from TDF’s National Open Captioning Initiative, which reaches audiences all across the country.

[To see a video of Open Captioning in action, just go here.]

“TDF is making this the norm,” Parton says. “Other cities can start to see, ‘Well, New York’s doing it. We should do it, too.’ I was living in Washington, D.C. for about two and a half years after college, and I went to see a couple of performances at the Kennedy Center that were captioned. I would not have gone if they hadn’t been captioned, and I had really been missing the theatre.”

Last season, she was especially glad to see open captioned performances of two Off-Broadway plays by Tony Kushner. “They were being produced and talked about all over the country, and I could be part of that dialogue,” she says

Now, after almost 15 years, open captioning is integral to Parton’s life in the theatre: “I can’t imagine seeing a play or a musical without it,” she says. “I’ve tried, and I just really don’t do as well. It’s really wonderful to be able to go and see a production with captions. It’s life-changing.”
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ABOUT CAITLIN by The NOHR Foundation

Caitlin Parton, 26, received NOHR’s 2011 Young Advocate Award at our May “Tea.”
At the age of 2 ½ Caitlin was the youngest child ever to receive a cochlear implant. Caitlin accompanied Gerry Fox to Washington, D.C. in 1991 and 1997 to give testimony before the Senate and House Appropriates Committee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education, on behalf of expanded research and funding for the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD). Over the years, Caitlin has made numerous public appearances and has received several other awards related to deafness and communication.