Hearing and Hearing Loss

Karyn Butts, National Health Museum Intern

There are many approaches you can take to address hearing and hearing loss/deafness with students. I recommend focusing on four areas outlined below. In the following descriptions, I provide points of departure for the topics that I think are conducive to (science) education as well as links to find further information and resources.

1. How do we hear? What is hearing loss?

• There are ample resources on the anatomy of the ear, how sound travels to the brain, and what mechanisms cause hearing loss. Start at Wise Ears, a program of NIH’s National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD). Go to their Information for Educators and Student Activities, for videos, lesson plans, fact sheets, etc.
  
  
• Hearing loss is either conductive or sensorineural. Discussion of each type leads to understanding physiological principles that can affect hearing (conductive) and the brain’s role in hearing (sensorineural).
  
  
• There is a lot of current research on using brain imaging (fMRI and PET scans) to learn about the areas of the brain responsible for hearing.
  
  
• Genetics play a big role in deafness and hearing loss and, so far, about 33 different genes have been identified as causes or contributors to hearing loss. Follow up from a previous AE update with Sally Camper and Yeohash Raphael at the University of Michigan about major breakthrough last year with guinea pig hair cell re-growth.

2. Prevention of hearing loss

• Noise-induced hearing loss affects tens of millions of people in the U.S. It is very important for all people to protect themselves against loud noise. Start with Wise Ears!
  
  
• A Danish company manufacturers really cool sound meters that are great for schools – they light up when the noise level (in the cafeteria, for example) gets to a dangerous level. Have been used in Scandinavia to keep schools at safe noise levels. Also provides the opportunity to talk about measuring sound (decibels).
  
  
• Listen Smart is a teen/tween-focused campaign, using contemporary music stars to encourage kids to use hearing protection. Lesson plans and a wonderful, 15 min. video available from the World Council on Hearing Health, Video features Moby, Linkin Park, Metallica but does not feature any hip-hop or R&B artists – one of its shortcomings.

3. Technology

• Cochlear Implants (CIs)
  This biomedical device allows deaf people to hear by bypassing the dysfunctional inner ear. PBS has a good animated demonstration of how a CI works.You can contact the big CI manufacturers to get sample devices and possibly local spokespeople to visit classrooms. Contact marketing executive Doug Lynch at Advanced Bionics in Sylmar California or ABC’s Bionic Ear Association. Contact VP of Marketing, Susan Van Horne, at Cochlear Americas in Colorado.
  More on cochlear implants below under Cultural issues.
  
  
• Hearing Aids
  The manufacturers seem to have the best resources on how hearing aids work. You could collect information from NIDCD or other sources then contact Bill Austin at Starkey Labs to find images or supplemental information. With hearing aids there is an opportunity to teach about digital vs. analog technology, miniaturization, electronics, etc. Did you know the hearing aid, not the radio, was the first commercial product to use the transistor after it was invented by scientists at Bell Laboratories in the late1940s?
  
  
• Assistive Listening Devices
  Have students think about how they would watch tv, wake up in the morning, answer the telephone, hear the doorbell, go to the movies, hear a fire alarm, etc., if they were deaf. Could develop exercise for students to create their own ideas for assistive technology. Self Help for Hard of Hearing People (SHHH) has a good online article about assistive technology.
  
  
• Infant Hearing Screening
  Did you know we tell if a baby can hear within hours of its birth? Two types of technology allow us to automatically detect whether the ear is functioning (otoacoustic emissions – OAE) or if the brainstem is picking up the signals the ear is sending to the brain (automated brainstem response – ABR). You can take this opportunity to talk about early childhood development: Most states require all infants to be screened – children can have serious language, learning and social delays if hearing loss goes undetected during the early developmental years. Students can search databases to find out if their state requires screening and how many babies have their hearing screened each year. Start at the World Council of Hearing Health’s website for resources on this topic, including maps, explanations of techniques and a searchable database of states with mandatory screening. Students in states with low screening and/or no mandates could do a letter writing campaign to state legislature.

4. Culture/Social Issues

• Contact the Starkey Hearing Foundation, to see how you might help them provide hearing aids to people in developing countries
  
  
• Contact Lorraine Short, editor of Hearing Health magazine, to get online reprint permission of an article on how people in Poland started a grassroots movement, going door-to-door collecting donations, to start an infant hearing screening program. Lorraine will be a great resource for this topic in general.
  
  
• Deaf vs deaf – Why would anyone want to be deaf?
  Traditionally, if you were born deaf and your parents were hearing you were sent off to a residential school for the deaf to live and be educated and learn American Sign Language (ASL). A culture emerged – Deaf (with a capital “D”) culture – with language and school as big cultural identifiers. There was a movement in the late 1980s called Deaf Pride. Gallaudet University is a bastion of Deaf culture as it is the only university for deaf individuals.

  Although, the issue is not as hot now as it was in the late 1980s and through the 1990s, there was significant controversy about providing deaf children with cochlear implants. In particular, the Deaf culture population feared that the cochlear implant was a form of cultural genocide. That is if instead of sending deaf children off to deaf schools where they become part of Deaf culture they are given CIs when they are very young, fewer and fewer people will “join” Deaf culture because they will grow up in the hearing world. There is a great PBS documentary, Sound and Fury, that explores these issues while following two deaf brothers and their decisions to implant or not implant their own deaf children. PBS also has lesson plans and great animated graphics of how cochlear implants work.
  
  

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