Children with moderate hearing loss: importance of suprathreshold speech audiometry with hearing aids at different voice intensities.

Purpose: Moderate hearing loss (41-55dB HL) in children is an increasing subject of research. This study aimed to evaluate the auditory performance of these children with correctly fitted hearing aids (HA) by comparing their aided pure tone thresholds and aided speech perception in suprathreshold speech audiometry.

Methods: This retrospective study included 24 children with moderate bilateral hearing loss.

Temporal Pitch Perception of Multi-Channel Stimuli by Cochlear-Implant Users.

Purpose: To explore the feasibility of cochlear-implant (CI) processing strategies that aim to improve pitch perception by presenting information on the stimulus temporal fine structure (TFS) in low-frequency channels to the corresponding apical electrodes.

Methods: Eight users of the MED-EL CI pitch-ranked stimuli consisting of isochronous pulse trains presented concurrently to the four most apical CI electrodes.

Results: When the same rate was applied to all electrodes, pitch ranks increased with increasing rates up to 200-300 pulses-per-second (pps), consistent with previous research.

Working Memory Deficits in School-Age Children With Cochlear Implants Are Primarily Explained by Deficits in the Processing of Auditory and Lexical Information.

Purpose: Prelingual deaf children with cochlear implants show lower digit span test scores compared to normal-hearing peers, suggesting a working memory impairment. To pinpoint more precisely the subprocesses responsible for this impairment, we designed a sequence reproduction task with varying length (two to six stimuli), modality (auditory or visual), and compressibility (sequences with more or less regular patterns). Results on 22 school-age children with cochlear implants and 21 normal-hearing children revealed a deficit of children with cochlear implants only in the auditory modality.

Asymmetry in the Perception of Electrical Chirps Presented to Cochlear Implant Listeners.

Introduction: Although a broadband acoustic click is physically the shortest duration sound we can hear, its peripheral neural representation is not as short because of cochlear filtering. The traveling wave imposes frequency-dependent delays to the sound waveform so that in response to a click, apical nerve fibers, coding for low frequencies, are excited several milliseconds after basal fibers, coding for high frequencies. Nevertheless, a click sounds like a click and these across-fiber delays are not perceived.

Similar gaze behaviour during dialogue perception in congenitally deaf children with cochlear Implants and normal hearing children.

Background: Perceptual and speech production abilities of children with cochlear implants (CIs) are usually tested by word and sentence repetition or naming tests. However, these tests are quite far apart from daily life linguistic contexts.

Aim: Here, we describe a way of investigating the link between language comprehension and anticipatory verbal behaviour promoting the use of more complex listening situations.

Tympanic Perforations in Children: When to Propose Surgical Closure?

Objective: This study aims to analyze the impact of age and other prognostic factors on the success of myringoplasty.

Study Design: A retrospective case series.

Settings: Pediatric ENT department of a tertiary academic center.

Early management of presbycusis: recommendations from the French Society of Otorhinolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery, the French Society of Audiology, and the French Society of Geriatrics and Gerontology.

Introduction: Presbycusis is the physiological decrease in hearing due to advancing age and begins well before the sixth decade. These recommendations recall the principles of early diagnosis of presbycusis and the means of optimal rehabilitation as soon as the first symptoms appear.

Material And Methods: The recommendations are based on a systematic analysis of the literature carried out by a multidisciplinary group of ENT physicians, audiologists, geriatricians and hearing specialists from all over France.

[Early management of presbycusis: recommendations from the French Society of Otorhinolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery, the French Society of Audiology, and the French Society of Geriatrics and Gerontology].

Introduction: Presbycusis is the physiological decrease in hearing due to advancing age and begins well before the sixth decade. These recommendations recall the principles of early diagnosis of presbycusis and the means of optimal rehabilitation as soon as the first symptoms appear.

Material And Methods: The recommendations are based on a systematic analysis of the literature carried out by a multidisciplinary group of doctors and audioprosthetists from all over France.

Hearing aid benefits in children with mild bilateral hearing loss: AUDIO-INFANS study.

Objectives: There is a lack of consensus regarding the definition, consequences, and management of mild bilateral hearing loss in children. The objective of this study is to analyze the benefit of hearing aids in children with mild bilateral hearing loss by evaluating their functional hearing.

Methods: This retrospective study included 57 children with mild bilateral hearing loss between 20 dB HL and 40 dB HL.

Does auditory deprivation impairs statistical learning in the auditory modality?

Early sensory deprivation allows assessing the extent of reorganisation of cognitive functions, well beyond sensory processing. As such, it is a good model to explore the links between sensory experience and cognitive functions. One of these functions, statistical learning - the ability to extract and use regularities present in the environment - is suspected to be impaired in prelingually deaf children with a cochlear implant.

Auditory memory for random time patterns in cochlear implant listeners.

Learning about new sounds is essential for cochlear-implant and normal-hearing listeners alike, with the additional challenge for implant listeners that spectral resolution is severely degraded. Here, a task measuring the rapid learning of slow or fast stochastic temporal sequences [Kang, Agus, and Pressnitzer (2017). J.

Temporal integration of short-duration pulse trains in cochlear implant listeners: Psychophysical and electrophysiological measurements.

While electrically-evoked auditory brainstem response (eABR) thresholds for low-rate pulse trains correlate well with behavioral thresholds measured at the same rate, the correlation is much weaker with behavioral thresholds measured at high rates, such as used clinically. This implies that eABRs to low-rate stimuli cannot be reliably used for objective programming of threshold levels in cochlear implant (CI) users. Here, we investigate whether the use of bunched-up pulses (BUPS), consisting of groups of closely-spaced pulses may be used as an alternative stimulus.

Rhythmic Abilities of Children With Hearing Loss.

Objectives: Children with hearing loss (HL), in spite of early cochlear implantation, often struggle considerably with language acquisition. Previous research has shown a benefit of rhythmic training on linguistic skills in children with HL, suggesting that improving rhythmic capacities could help attenuating language difficulties. However, little is known about general rhythmic skills of children with HL and how they relate to speech perception.

Rhythmic Training Improves Temporal Anticipation and Adaptation Abilities in Children With Hearing Loss During Verbal Interaction.

Purpose In this study, we investigate temporal adaptation capacities of children with normal hearing and children with cochlear implants and/or hearing aids during verbal exchange. We also address the question of the efficiency of a rhythmic training on temporal adaptation during speech interaction in children with hearing loss. Method We recorded electroencephalogram data in children while they named pictures delivered on a screen, in alternation with a virtual partner.

Changes of metabolism and functional connectivity in late-onset deafness: Evidence from cerebral F-FDG-PET.

Hearing loss is known to impact brain function. The aim of this study was to characterize cerebral metabolic Positron Emission Tomography (PET) changes in elderly patients fulfilling criteria for cochlear implant and investigate the impact of hearing loss on functional connectivity. Statistical Parametric Mapping-T-scores-maps comparisons of F-FDG-PET of 27 elderly patients fulfilling criteria for cochlear implant for hearing loss (best-aided speech intelligibility lower or equal to 50%) and 27 matched healthy subjects (p < 0.

Forward Masking in Cochlear Implant Users: Electrophysiological and Psychophysical Data Using Pulse Train Maskers.

Electrical stimulation of auditory nerve fibers using cochlear implants (CI) shows psychophysical forward masking (pFM) up to several hundreds of milliseconds. By contrast, recovery of electrically evoked compound action potentials (eCAPs) from forward masking (eFM) was shown to be more rapid, with time constants no greater than a few milliseconds. These discrepancies suggested two main contributors to pFM: a rapid-recovery process due to refractory properties of the auditory nerve and a slow-recovery process arising from more central structures.

Effect of Pulse Polarity on Thresholds and on Non-monotonic Loudness Growth in Cochlear Implant Users.

Most cochlear implants (CIs) activate their electrodes non-simultaneously in order to eliminate electrical field interactions. However, the membrane of auditory nerve fibers needs time to return to its resting state, causing the probability of firing to a pulse to be affected by previous pulses. Here, we provide new evidence on the effect of pulse polarity and current level on these interactions.

International Pediatric Otolaryngology Group (IPOG) consensus recommendations: Hearing loss in the pediatric patient.

Objective: To provide recommendations for the workup of hearing loss in the pediatric patient.

Methods: Expert opinion by the members of the International Pediatric Otolaryngology Group.

Results: Consensus recommendations include initial screening and diagnosis as well as the workup of sensorineural, conductive and mixed hearing loss in children.

Laryngotracheal Stenosis in Children and Infants With Neurological Disorders: Management and Outcome.

Introduction: The goal of this retrospective study is to compare the management and outcome of surgical treatment of laryngotracheal stenosis in children and infants with and without an associated neurological disorder.

Patients And Method: In a series of children operated on for subglottic stenosis (SGS), patients with an associated neurological disorder were identified. The following criteria were compared in children with and without neurological disease: grade of stenosis, age, technique (Crico-Tracheal Resection (CTR), Laryngo-Tracheo-Plasty (LTP) in single and 2 stage, laser), analyzing duration, preoperative tracheostomy, decannulation rate, preoperative gastrostomy, and number of days in intensive care unit and in hospital.

Native language shapes automatic neural processing of speech.

The development of the phoneme inventory is driven by the acoustic-phonetic properties of one's native language. Neural representation of speech is known to be shaped by language experience, as indexed by cortical responses, and recent studies suggest that subcortical processing also exhibits this attunement to native language. However, most work to date has focused on the differences between tonal and non-tonal languages that use pitch variations to convey phonemic categories.

Auditory training improves auditory performance in cochlear implanted children.

Unlabelled: While the positive benefits of pediatric cochlear implantation on language perception skills are now proven, the heterogeneity of outcomes remains high. The understanding of this heterogeneity and possible strategies to minimize it is of utmost importance. Our scope here is to test the effects of an auditory training strategy, "sound in Hands", using playful tasks grounded on the theoretical and empirical findings of cognitive sciences.

Rate discrimination at low pulse rates in normal-hearing and cochlear implant listeners: Influence of intracochlear stimulation site.

Temporal pitch perception in cochlear implantees remains weaker than in normal hearing listeners and is usually limited to rates below about 300 pulses per second (pps). Recent studies have suggested that stimulating the apical part of the cochlea may improve the temporal coding of pitch by cochlear implants (CIs), compared to stimulating other sites. The present study focuses on rate discrimination at low pulse rates (ranging from 20 to 104 pps).

Rhythmic priming enhances speech production abilities: evidence from prelingually deaf children.

Objective: Following recent findings that rhythmic priming can enhance speech perception, the aim of this experiment was to investigate whether this extends to speech production.

Method: The authors measured the influence of rhythmic priming on phonological production abilities in 14 hearing impaired children with hearing devices. Children had to repeat sentences that were or were not preceded by a rhythmical prime.

Prenatal diagnosis of congenital dacryocystocele.

Congenital bilateral dacryocystocele was diagnosed prenatally by ultrasonography in 3 female fetuses at 32.5 weeks gestation. After birth, first baby developed respiratory distress and was treated with endoscopic marsupialization of the cysts; the second baby had no respiratory symptoms and had spontaneous resolution of the cysts without surgery.

Middle ear implant in conductive and mixed congenital hearing loss in children.

Purpose: Active middle ear implant can be used in children and adolescents with congenital hearing loss. The authors report their experience with the semi implantable Medel Vibrant Soundbridge(®) (VSB) in the audiologic rehabilitation of such patients.

Methods: In this retrospective study, audiological and surgical data of 10 children (10.