Address correspondence to: Linda J. Hood, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences, Vanderbilt Bill Wilkerson Center, Vanderbilt University, 1215 21st Ave. So., #8310, Medical Center East, So. Tower, Nashville, TN. 37232-8242. [email protected] Determination of hearing sensitivity for infants below 5–6 months of age depends on objective test methods. Objective appro...

BACKGROUND Universal Newborn Hearing Screening (UNHC) is the gold standard toward early hearing detection and intervention, hence the importance of its deliberation within the South African context. AIM To determine the feasibility of screening in low-risk neonates, using Otoacoustic Emissions (OAEs), within the Midwife Obstetric Unit (MOU) three-day assessment clinic at a Community Health Ce...

This article describes some of the factors relevant to the establishment of a universal newborn hearing screening (UNHS) program. First, the difficulty in providing precise estimates of test sensitivity and specificity are reviewed. This section is followed by hypothetical estimates of overall programmatic costs, first for a fixed number of babies to be screened and then as a function of the nu...

The mammalian cochlea receives feedback from the brainstem medial olivocochlear (MOC) efferents, whose putative 'antimasking' function is to adjust cochlear amplification and enhance peripheral signal detection in adverse listening environments. Human studies have been inconsistent in demonstrating a clear connection between this corticofugal system and behavioral speech-in-noise (SIN) listenin...

objectives: otoacoustic emissions (oaes) are sounds that originate in cochlea and are measured in external auditory canal and provide a simple, efficient and non-invasive objective indicator of healthy cochlear function. olivo cochlear bundle (ocb) or auditory efferent system is a neural feedback pathway which originated from brain stem and terminated in the inner ear and can be evaluated non-i...

The major biogeochemical cycles that keep the present-day Earth habitable are linked by a network of feedbacks, which has led to a broadly stable chemical composition of the oceans and atmosphere over hundreds of millions of years. This includes the processes that control both the atmospheric and oceanic concentrations of oxygen. However, one notable exception to the generally well-behaved dyna...