Skip to main content

Home/ SciByte/ Group items tagged speech

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Mars Base

Just a few years of early musical training benefits the brain later in life - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...ly-musical-benefits-brain.html

scibyte109

shared by Mars Base on 07 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Older adults who took music lessons as children but haven't actively played an instrument in decades have a faster brain response to a speech sound than individuals who never played an instrument,
  • As people grow older, they often experience changes in the brain that compromise hearing
  • the brains of older adults show a slower response to fast-changing sounds, which is important for interpreting speec
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • recent studies of musicians suggest lifelong musical training may offset these and other cognitive declines
  • previous studies show such age-related declines are not inevitable
  • the current study,
  • explored whether limited musical training early in life is associated with changes in the way the brain responds to sound decades later
  • t the more years study participants spent playing instruments as youth, the faster their brains responded to a speech sound.
  • For the study, 44 healthy adults, ages 55-76, listened to a synthesized speech syllable ("da") while researchers measured electrical activity in the auditory brainstem
  • This region of the brain processes sound and is a hub for cognitive, sensory, and reward information
  • researchers discovered that, despite none of the study participants having played an instrument in nearly 40 years
  • participants who completed 4-14 years of music training early in life had the fastest response to the speech sound (on the order of a millisecond faster than those without music training).
  • a millisecond faster may not seem like much, but the brain is very sensitive to timing and a millisecond compounded over millions of neurons can make a real difference
Mars Base

Study shows how bilinguals switch between languages - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...3-05-bilinguals-languages.html

scibyte95

shared by Mars Base on 22 May 13 - No Cached
  • Individuals who learn two languages at an early age seem to switch back and forth between separate "sound systems" for each language, according to new research
  • The research
  • addresses enduring questions in bilingual studies about how bilingual speakers hear and process sound in two different languages.
  • ...27 more annotations...
  • "A lot of research has shown that bilinguals are pretty good at accommodating speech variation across languages, but there's been a debate as to how,"
  • lead author Kalim Gonzales, a psychology doctoral student at the University of Arizona
  • two views: One is that bilinguals have different processing modes for their two languages—they have a mode for processing speech in one language and then a mode for processing speech in the other language
  • Another view is that bilinguals just adjust to speech variation by recalibrating to the unique acoustic properties of each language."
  • Gonzales's research supports the first view—that bilinguals who learn two languages early in life learn two separate processing modes, or "sound systems
  • The study looked at 32 Spanish-English early bilinguals, who had learned their second language before age 8.
  • Participants were presented with a series of pseudo-words beginning with a 'pa' or a 'ba' sound and asked to identify which of the two sounds they heard
  • 'pa' and 'ba' sounds exist in both English and Spanish, how those sounds are produced and perceived in the two languages varies subtly
  • 'ba,' for example, English speakers typically begin to vibrate their vocal chords the moment they open their lips
  • Spanish speakers begin vocal chord vibration slightly before they open their lips and produce 'pa' in a manner similar to English 'ba.'
  • English-only speakers might, in some cases, confuse the 'ba' and 'pa' sounds they hear in Spanish
  • most people think about differences between languages
  • different words and they have different grammars
  • at their base languages use different sounds
  • One of the reasons it sounds different when you hear someone speaking a different language is because the actual sounds they use are different
  • someone might sound like they have an accent if they learn Spanish first is because their 'pa' is like an English 'ba,' so when they say a word with 'pa,' it will sound like a 'ba' to an English monolingual
  • For the study, the bilingual participants were divided into two groups. One group was told they would be hearing rare words in Spanish, while the other was told they would be hearing rare words in English
  • Both groups heard audio recordings of variations of the same two words—bafri and pafri—which are not real words in either language
  • Each group heard the same series of words, but for the group told they were hearing Spanish, the ends of the words were pronounced slightly differently, with the 'r' getting a Spanish pronunciation
  • Participants perceived 'ba' and 'pa' sounds differently depending on whether they were told they were hearing Spanish words, with the Spanish pronunciation of 'r,' or whether they were told they were hearing English words, with the English pronunciation of 'r.'
  • when you put people in English mode, they actually would act like English speakers, and then if you put them in Spanish mode, they would switch to acting like Spanish speakers
  • hearing the exact same 'ba's and 'pa's would label them differently depending on the context
  • When the study was repeated with 32 English monolinguals, participants did not show the same shift in perception; they labeled 'ba' and 'pa' sounds the same way regardless of which language they were told they were hearing
  • that lack of an effect
  • provided the strongest evidence for two sound systems in bilinguals
  • true primarily for those who learn two languages very young
  • If you learn a second language later in life, you usually have a dominant language and then you try to use that sounds system for the other language, which is why you end up having an accent
Mars Base

Chipmaker Races to Save Stephen Hawking's Speech as His Condition Deteriorates: Sc... - 0 views

www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm

scibyte80 StephenHawking

shared by Mars Base on 01 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking has long relied on technology to help him connect with the outside world despite the degenerative motor neuron disease he has battled for the past 50 years
  • a highly respected computer scientist indicated at last week’s International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that he and his team may be close to a breakthrough that could boost the rate at which the physicist communicates, which has fallen to a mere one word per minute in recent years.
  • For the past decade Hawking has used a voluntary twitch of his cheek muscle to compose words and sentences one letter at a time that are expressed through a speech-generation device connected to his computer.
  • ...25 more annotations...
  • Each tweak stops a cursor that continuously scans text on a screen facing the scientist.
  • Intel chief technology officer
  • noted that Hawking can actually make a number of other facial expressions as well that might also be used to speed up the rate at which the physicist conveys his thoughts
  • Even providing Hawking with two inputs would give him the ability to communicate using Morse code
  • Intel has since the late 1990s supplied Hawking with technology to help the scientist express himself
  • The latest chapter in their work together began in late 2011 when Hawking reached out to
  • inform
  • the Intel co-founder and father of Moore’s law that the physicist’s ability to compose text was slowing and inquiring whether Intel could help.
  • met with Hawking early last year around the time of the latter’s 70th birthday celebration in Cambridge, where the Intel CTO was one of the speakers
  • After meeting with Hawking
  • he wondered whether his company’s processor technology could restore the scientist’s ability to communicate at five words per minute, or even increase that rate to 10
  • Intel is now working on a system that can use Hawking’s cheek twitch as well as mouth and eyebrow movements to provide signals to his computer
  • built a new, character-driven interface in modern terms that includes a better word predictor
  • company is also exploring the use of facial-recognition software to create a new user interface for Hawking that would be quicker than selecting individual letters or words
  • A black box beneath his wheelchair contains an audio amplifier, voltage regulators and a USB hardware key that receives the input from an infrared sensor on Hawking’s eyeglasses, which detects changes in light as he twitches his cheek
  • current setup includes a tablet PC with a forward-facing Webcam that he can use to place Skype calls
  • A hardware voice synthesizer sits in another black box on the back of the chair and receives commands from the computer via a USB-based serial port
  • Intel’s work with Hawking is part of the company’s broader research into smart gadgets as well as assistive technologies for the elderly
  • The key to advancing smart devices—which have been at a plateau over the past five or six years—is context awareness
  • Devices will really get to know us the way a friend would, understanding how our facial expressions reflect our mood
  • Intel’s plan for identifying personal context requires a combination of hardware sensors—camera, accelerometer, microphone, thermometer and others
  • with software that can check one’s personal calendar, social networks and Internet browsing habits, to name a few.
  • use this [information] to reason your current context and what's important at any given time [and deliver] pervasive assistance
  • One approach to “pervasive assistance” is the Magic Carpet, a rug that Intel and GE developed with embedded sensors and accelerometers that can record a person’s normal routine and even their gait, sounding an alert when deviations are detected.
  • Such assistance will anticipate our needs, letting us know when we are supposed to be at an appointment and even reminding us to carry enough cash when running certain errands
Mars Base

Researches find poop-throwing by chimps is a sign of intelligence - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...owing-chimps-intelligence.html

scibyte24

shared by Mars Base on 01 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • researchers studying such behavior have come to the conclusion that throwing feces, or any object really, is actually a sign of high ordered behavior
  • they are the only other species besides humans that regularly throw things with a clear target in mind
  • watching chimps in action for several years and comparing their actions with scans of their brains to see if there were any correlations between those chimps that threw a lot
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • those that didn’t or whether they’re accuracy held any deeper meaning
  • chimps that both threw more and were more likely to hit their targets showed heightened development in the motor cortex
  • more connections between it and the Broca’s area, which they say is an important part of speech in humans
  • Such findings led the term to suggest that the ability to throw is, or was, a precursor to speech development in human beings
  • those that could throw better also appeared to be better communicators within their group
  • better throwing chimps didn’t appear to posses any more physical prowess than other chimps
  • throwing didn’t develop as a means of hunting, but as a form of communication within groups
  • throwing stuff at someone else became a form of self expression
Mars Base

Numbers Games Devised to Aid People with "Dyscalculia": Scientific American - 0 views

www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm

scibyte78 Dyscalculia

shared by Mars Base on 19 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • By developing treatments for dyscalculia
  • to test competing theories about the cognitive basis of numeracy. If,
  • dyscalculia is at heart a deficiency of basic number sense and not of memory, attention or language, as others have proposed, then nurturing the roots of number sense should help dyscalculics
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • It may be the case that what these kids need is just much more practice than the rest of us
  • starts with a game involving a number line
  • “What is the number that is right in the middle between 200 and 800? Do you know it?
  • A classic sign of dyscalculia is difficulty in grasping the place-value system,
  • A soft computer voice tells Christopher to “find the number and click it
  • The game involves zooming in and zooming out to rescale the number line
  • talks through each move — a strategy that Babtie encourages
  • but it takes him more than a minute to locate 210. His classmates, meanwhile, are learning to multiply two-digit numbers.
  • Butterworth
  • made his name probing obscure speech and language disorders
  • tested 31 eight- and nine-year-old children who were near the bottom of their class in mathematics but did well enough in other subjects.
  • Compared with normal children and those with dyslexia, the dyscalculic children struggled on almost every numerical task, yet were average on tests of reading comprehension, memory and IQ.
Mars Base

Regaining proper hearing at last - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...2013-04-regaining-proper.html

scibyte89 Hearing

shared by Mars Base on 08 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • In the case of patients with severe hearing impairments, however, conventional behind-the-ear hearing aids reach the limits of their usefulness
  • These patients' hearing can only be helped by an implant, which amplifies sounds more effectively than conventional systems and boasts better sound quality
  • these middle ear implants require complex operations that last several hours. The high risk and expense of the surgery mean that it is rarely performed
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • The new solution is composed of three parts: a case with a microphone and battery; wireless, optical signal and energy transmission between the outer and middle ear; and an electro-acoustic transducer – the centerpiece and loudspeaker of the implant.
  • Researchers
  • are developing the electro-acoustic transducer, which will be round in shape and measure approximately 1.2 millimeters
  • To implant our system, all surgeons have to do is make a small incision at the side of the eardrum and then fold it forward. This can be done in outpatient surgery."
  • takes the form of a piezoelectric micro-actuator, is then placed directly at the connection between the middle and inner ear known as the "round window"
  • there it transmits acoustic signals to the inner ear in the form of amplified mechanical vibrations, thereby enhancing the hearing capacity of patients
  • it can output volumes of up to 120 decibels, which is roughly the noise a jackhammer makes.
  • This high performance is necessary for very good speech comprehension, particularly for high-pitched sounds, which people who are severely hard of hearing find especially difficult to pick up
  • currently testing a first working prototype in the laboratory. Results have been positive to date
  • The individual components of the hearing aid have all been developed. The next step is to optimize and assemble them
  • The implant must measure up to high requirements: the material must be encased so the body tolerates it and it has to remain stable over long periods
  • hearing aid implants should last at least ten years
  • optimized individual components should be ready by June of this year; testing of the overall system is planned for 2014
Mars Base

Pioneering Moon, Mars Scientist David McKay Dies at 76 | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/-mckay-obituary-moon-mars.html

scibyte83

shared by Mars Base on 26 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • McKay, who served as chief scientist for astrobiology at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston,died peacefully in his sleep on Feb. 20
  • As a graduate student, McKay was in the audience
  • when President John F. Kennedy gave his legendary "We choose to go to the moon" speech
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • McKay joined NASA in June of 1965
  • participating extensively in astronaut training leading up to 1969's historic Apollo 11 mission
  • McKay was lead author of a 1996 paper in the journal Science that suggested ALH84001 may contain evidence of past life on Mars.
  • The claim still spurs controversy, but it also sparked a shift in perspectives that is alive and well within NASA today
  • McKay developed innovative new technology for both life detection and the use of lunar regolith as feedstock, radiation protection, fuel, nutrient source for microbial bioreactors and long-term lunar habitation.
Mars Base

Software automatically transforms movie clips into comic strips - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...automatically-movie-comic.html

scibyte38 media comic

shared by Mars Base on 14 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • a team of researchers has designed a program that can automatically transform movie scenes into comic strips, without the need for any human intervention.
  • previous programs have been developed to assist cartoonists in converting movies into comics
  • new method is the first fully automated approach
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • automatic script-face mapping algorithm that identifies the speaking character in scenes with multiple characters, automatic generation of comic panels of different sizes, positioning word balloons, and rendering movie frames in a cartoon style.
  • used the new method to transform 15 movie clips into comic strips
  • varied in length from 2 to 7 minutes
  • Titanic,” “Sherlock Holmes,” and “The Message
  • sometimes put word bubbles next to the faces of incorrect characters
  • script-face mapping algorithm had an accuracy of 85%, which the researchers hope to improve.
  • technique is capable of performing all steps automatically
  • researchers noted that involving some human effort could lead to even better results
  • software would provide recommendations for each step of the transformation process, and humans could manually adjust the results much more quickly and efficiently than in pure manual methods
  • two future plans
  • improve the performance of each component, such as script-face mapping, and hope we can generate perfect clips without user interaction
  • integrate speech recognition technology to generalize the software, such that we can generate comics without movie scripts
Mars Base

Practicing music for only few years in childhood helps improve adult brain: research - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...ars-childhood-adult-brain.html

scibyte60 music

shared by Mars Base on 22 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • A little music training in childhood goes a long way in improving how the brain function
  • researchers for the first time have directly examined what happens after children stop playing a musical instrument after only a few years
  • Compared to peers with no musical training, adults with one to five years of musical training as children had enhanced brain responses to complex sounds, making them more effective at pulling out the
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • lowest frequency in sound
  • crucial for speech and music perception, allowing recognition of sounds in complex and noisy auditory environments.
  • musical training as children makes better listeners later in life
  • the study suggests that short-term music lessons may enhance lifelong listening and learning
  • For the study, young adults with varying amounts of past musical training were tested by measuring electrical signals from the auditory brainstem in response to eight complex sounds ranging in pitch
  • Forty-five adults were grouped into three
  • matched groups based on histories of musical instruction
  • One group had no musical instruction
  • another had 1 to 5 years
  • the other had to 6 to 11 years
  • Both musically trained groups began instrumental practice around age 9
  • musical training during childhood led to more robust neural processing of sounds later in life
  • Prior research on highly trained musicians and early bilinguals revealed that enhanced brainstem responses to sound are associated with heightened auditory perception, executive function and auditory communication skills.
  • we infer that a few years of music lessons also confer advantages in how one perceives and attends to sounds in everyday communication situations, such as noisy restaurants
Mars Base

Neil Armstrong, 1st man on the moon, dies at 82 - 0 views

phys.org/...l-armstrong-1st-moon-dies.html

scibyte60 NeilArmstrong

shared by Mars Base on 25 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • "I am, and ever will be, a white socks, pocket protector, nerdy engineer," he said in February 2000 in one of his rare public appearances. "And I take a substantial amount of pride in the accomplishments of my profession."
  • At the time of the flight's 40th anniversary, Armstrong again was low-key, telling a gathering that the space race was "the ultimate peaceful competition: USA versus U.S.S.R. It did allow both sides to take the high road, with the objectives of science and learning and exploration."
  • In all, 12 American astronauts walked on the moon between 1969 and the last moon mission in 1972
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • Armstrong was born Aug. 5, 1930, on a farm in Ohio
  • He was licensed to fly at 16, before he got his driver's license
  • enrolled in Purdue University to study aeronautical engineering but was called to duty with the U.S. Navy in 1949 and flew 78 combat missions in Korea
  • He became a test pilot with what evolved into the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, flying more than 200 kinds of aircraft from gliders to jets.
  • accepted into NASA's second astronaut class in 1962
  • backup commander for the historic Apollo 8 mission at Christmastime in 1968
  • In Wapakoneta, media and souvenir frenzy was swirling around the home of Armstrong's parents
  • People were pulling grass out of their front yard."
  • Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins were given ticker tape parades in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles and later made a 22-nation world tour. A homecoming in Wapakoneta drew 50,000 people to the city of 9,000.
  • In 1970, Armstrong was appointed deputy associate administrator for aeronautics at NASA but left the following year to teach aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati.
  • remained there until 1979 and during that time bought a farm, where he raised cattle and corn. He stayed out of public view, accepting few requests for interviews or speeches.
  • "I can honestly say—and it's a big surprise to me—that I have never had a dream about being on the moon," he said
  • His family's statement
  • "Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink.
Mars Base

Video: How Parrots Talk - ScienceNOW - 0 views

news.sciencemag.org/...enceshot-how-parrots-talk.html

scibyte25

shared by Mars Base on 09 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • Parrots have neither lips nor teeth, but that doesn't stop them from producing dead-on imitations of human speech
  • like humans, parrots use their tongues to form sounds
  • scientists took x-ray movies of monk parakeets
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • No other type of bird is known to move its tongue to vocalize
  • Parrots use their mobile, muscular tongues to explore their environment and manipulate food
  • Those capable organs
  • also help parrots utter greetings in words that even humans can understand.
Mars Base

Babies Lip-read Before Talking - Science News - 0 views

www.sciencenews.org/...Babies_lip-read_before_talking

scibyte30 babies

shared by Mars Base on 20 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • infants start babbling at around age 6 months in preparation for talking
  • shift from focusing on adults’ eyes to paying special attention to speakers’ mouths
  • tots become able to blurt out words and simple statements at age 1, they go back to concentrating on adults’ eyes
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • babbling babies match up what adults say with how they say
  • budding talkers can afford to look for communication signals in a speakers’ eyes
  • tested 179 infants from English-speaking families at age 4, 6, 8 or 12 months
  • devices tracked where babies looked when shown videos of women speaking English or a foreign language
  • also report that on average, infants’ pupils increasingly dilated between ages 8 months and 1 year in response to Spanish speakers, a sign of surprise at encountering unfamiliar speech
  • By 2 years of age, children with autism avoid eye contact and focus on speakers’ mouths
  • new findings raise the possibility of identifying kids headed for this developmental disorder even earlier
  • hasn’t yet been demonstrated that children who continue to look at the mouths of native-language speakers after age 1 develop autism or other communication problems more frequently than those who shift to looking at speakers’ eyes
Mars Base

British researchers create robot that can learn simple words by conversing with humans ... - 0 views

phys.org/...t-simple-words-conversing.html

scibyte51 robot

shared by Mars Base on 17 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • In an attempt to replicate the early experiences of infants, researchers in England have created a robot that can learn simple words in minutes just by having a conversation with a human.
  • three-foot-tall robot, named DeeChee, was built to produce any syllable in the English language. But it knew no words at the outset of the study, speaking only babble phrases like "een rain rain mahdl kross."
  • human volunteer attempted to teach the robot simple words for shapes and colors by using them repeatedly in regular speech.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • At first, all DeeChee could comprehend was an unsegmented stream of sounds
  • had been programmed to break up that stream into individual syllables and to store them in its memory
  • words were ranked according to how often they came up in conversation
  • words like "red" and "green" were prized.
  • designed to recognize words of encouragement, like "good" and "well done,"
  • That feedback helped transform the robot's babble into coherent words, sometimes in as little as two minutes.
  • repetition of sounds helps infants learn a language, then it's not surprising that our first words are often mainstays like "mama" and "dada."
  • words that form the connective tissue of our language - words like "at," "with" and "of" - are spoken in hundreds of different ways, making them difficult for newbies to recognize
  • more concrete words like "house" or "blue" tend to be spoken in the same way nearly every time
  • study relied on the human volunteers speaking naturally
  • DeeChee was programmed to smile when it was ready to pay attention to its teacher and to stop smiling and blink when it needed a break
  • designed to have a gender-neutral appearance, humans tended to treat it as a boy
Mars Base

New strategy to treat multiple sclerosis shows promise in mice - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...y-multiple-sclerosis-mice.html

scibyte106 MultipleSclerosis

shared by Mars Base on 12 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Scientists
  • have identified a set of compounds that may be used to treat multiple sclerosis (MS) in a new way
  • existing MS therapies
  • ...36 more annotations...
  • ppress the immune system
  • the compounds boost a population of progenitor cells that can in turn repair MS-damaged nerve fibers
  • cautioned that benztropine is a drug with dose-related adverse side effects, and has yet to be proven effective at a safe dose in human MS patients
  • the newly identified compounds, a Parkinson's disease drug called benztropine, was highly effective in treating a standard model of MS in mice, both alone and in combination with existing MS therapies
  • MS currently affects more than half a million people in North America and Europe, and more than two million worldwide
  • precise triggers are unknown, but certain infections and a lack of vitamin D are thought to be risk factors
  • In MS, immune cells known as T cells infiltrate the upper spinal cord and brain
  • causing inflammation and ultimately the loss of an insulating coating called myelin on some nerve fibers
  • As nerve fibers lose this myelin coating, they lose their ability to transmit signals efficiently, and in time may begin to degenerate
  • resulting symptoms, which commonly occur in a stop-start, "relapsing-remitting" pattern, may include limb weakness, numbness and tingling, fatigue, vision problems, slurred speech, memory difficulties and depression, among other problems
  • Current therapies
  • aim to suppress the immune attack that de-myelinates nerve fibers. But they are only partially effective and are apt to have significant adverse side effects
  • the new study
  • aimed at restoring a population of progenitor cells called oligodendrocytes
  • These cells normally keep the myelin sheaths of nerve fibers in good repair and in principle could fix these coatings after MS damages them
  • oligodendrocyte numbers decline sharply in MS, due to a still-mysterious problem with the stem-like precursor cells that produce them
  • team screened a library of about 100,000 diverse compounds for any that could potently induce OPCs to mature or "differentiate."
  • Several compounds scored well
  • benztropine, had been well characterized and indeed was already FDA-approved for treating Parkinson's disease
  • tests, benztropine showed a powerful ability to prevent autoimmune disease and also was effective in treating it after symptoms had arisen
  • virtually eliminating the disease's ability to relapse
  • benztropine on its own worked about as well as existing treatments, it also showed a remarkable ability to complement these existing treatments
  • two first-line immune-suppressant therapies, interferon-beta and fingolimod
  • Adding even a suboptimal level of benztropine
  • allowed
  • to cut the dose of fingolimod by 90%
  • the same disease-modifying effect as a normal dose
  • that dose-lowering could translate into a big reduction in
  • potentially serious side effects
  • researchers confirmed that benztropine works against disease in this mouse model by boosting the population of mature oligodendrocytes
  • in turn restore the myelin sheaths of damaged nerves
  • even as the immune attack continues
  • benztropine-treated mice showed no change in the usual signs of inflammation, yet their myelin was mostly intact, suggesting that it was probably being repaired as rapidly as it was being destroyed
  • Benztropine is known to have multiple specific effects on brain cells, including the blocking of activity at acetylcholine and histamine receptors and a boosting of activity at dopamine receptors
  • hope to learn more about how
  • its molecular structure might be optimized for this purpose
Mars Base

Hearing quality restored with bionic ear technology used for gene therapy - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...ionic-ear-technology-gene.html

scibyte128 MedicalDevice

shared by Mars Base on 24 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Researchers
  • have for the first time used electrical pulses delivered from a cochlear implant to deliver gene therapy, thereby successfully regrowing auditory nerves
  • The research also heralds a possible new way of treating a range of neurological disorders, including Parkinson's disease, and psychiatric conditions such as depression through this novel way of delivering gene therapy.
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • "People with cochlear implants do well with understanding speech, but their perception of pitch can be poor, so they often miss out on the joy of music," says UNSW Professor Gary Housley
  • The work centres on regenerating surviving nerves after age-related or environmental hearing loss, using existing cochlear technology
  • The cochlear implants are "surprisingly efficient" at localised gene therapy in the animal model, when a few electric pulses are administered during the implant procedure.
  • It has long been established that the auditory nerve endings regenerate if neurotrophins – a naturally occurring family of proteins crucial for the development, function and survival of neurons – are delivered to the auditory portion of the inner ear, the cochlea.
  • until now, research has stalled because safe, localised delivery of the neurotrophins can't be achieved using drug delivery, nor by viral-based gene therapy
  • developed a way of using electrical pulses delivered from the cochlear implant to deliver the DNA to the cells close to the array of implanted electrodes. These cells then produce neurotrophins.
  • the neurotrophin production dropped away after a couple of months
  • ultimately the changes in the hearing nerve may be maintained by the ongoing neural activity generated by the cochlear implant.
  • "We think it's possible that in the future this gene delivery would only add a few minutes to the implant procedure,"
  • Jeremy Pinyon, whose PhD is based on this work
  • "The surgeon who installs the device would inject the DNA solution into the cochlea and then fire electrical impulses to trigger the DNA transfer once the implant is inserted."
  • Integration of this technology into other 'bionic' devices such as electrode arrays used in deep brain stimulation
  • the treatment of Parkinson's disease and depression, for example) could also afford opportunities for safe, directed gene therapy of complex neurological disorders
  • implications far beyond hearing disorders
  • Professor Matthias Klugmann
  • "Gene therapy has been suggested as a treatment concept even for devastating neurological conditions and our technology provides a novel platform for safe and efficient gene transfer into tissues as delicate as the brain."
1 - 16 of 16
Showing 20▼ items per page