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Working to restore hearing
Human hearing is crucial to our social interactions and can convey emotion, nuances that all too often computers cannot. Imagine the awkwardness of the technology and personal endeavour by the patient concerned of learning to use a hearing aid or tolerating the surgery necessary for a cochlear implant. Imagine too the bliss of a solution that, like immunisation, forestalls the former.
In a talk to the London Evening meeting of the British Society of Audiology, ISTM researcher Dr David Furness, (pictured, above), described the pros and cons of the options. He reviewed the research and the outcomes that have enabled more people to hear again. He and his group are working on a biological solution to solving this problem; replacing by injection the sensory cells that have gone missing due to age or trauma by new ones. This seems like other replacement therapy, a biological solution, to hearing loss that all could benefit from by their late70's. But Dr Furness emphasised the need for a careful approach.
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