While decades have been spent exploring all the dynamics of the inner ear and how hearing loss can arise, researchers and audiologists alike will still be the first to admit that they still don’t have all of the answers. Each new day is another opportunity to discover something new and revolutionary in the auditory world, and one recent study in particular could provide beneficial answers that pertain to improved therapy methods for hearing loss.
A team of researchers from Texas A&M University along with colleagues from Stanford University have developed technology that can produce some of the most detailed images of the inner ear known to humans. The technological system in question uses a sort of ultrasound effect to generate high-resolution and three-dimensional images of the inner ear region, which contains cochlea and is primarily responsible for the entire hearing process.
Why new technology is needed
The inner workings of the cochlea have long been difficult to study for audiologists, primarily due to how tiny and delicate the bones are as well as how sensitive the surrounding tissue is. Inspecting the inner ear and cochlea is nearly impossible while a human subject is alive because drilling into the bones in that area can produce a high risk of damaging the tissues and altering the hearing dynamics of how sound travels up to the brain. Because of the inner ear’s delicacy, crucial elements to hearing, such as how the cochlea amplify sounds and how noise vibrations convert into nerve impulses, are often left up to hypothesized speculation.
How it works
The technology uses a technique that is known as optical coherence tomography, or OCT, to help render incredibly detailed images of the inner ear and cochlea while it is still in tact. This system is able to capture measurements of the inner ear’s structure, and can also detail the tiny vibrations that take place inside the cochlea and are eventually converted into processed sound. This specific type of technology was mainly used on animals before now, where images that helped researchers analyze mouse cochleas were able to provide the colleagues with more insight on how hearing loss could be produced in humans. Taking what they learned from the inner ears of mice and applying it to human auditory analysis, the researchers can use the images from the technology to focus on how certain occurrences in the cochlea, such as sound amplification and frequency spectrums, are linked to hearing loss.
Brian Applegate, a professor at Texas A&M and lead contributor on the study, has chronicled his team’s efforts detailing how hearing works within mice, and how this has helped them understand how to use the technology to see how failure inside a human cochlea can cause auditory impairment.
“We are the first to use this technique on mice in order to image the cochlea,” Applegate said in a statement. “We’re working on making measurements of the movement within the cochlea that have never before been made; we’re finding out new things about the mechanics of the inner ear that have not been known. This information contributes to our understanding of the morphology of the inner ear as well as its mechanical functions so that therapies might be developed in the future.”
Looking ahead
This new form of imaging technology is incredible because it is allowing researchers to thoroughly analyze the inner ear for the first time, and could provide immense therapeutic benefits for the 48 million U.S. citizens currently living with hearing loss. Only time will tell if this system can prove revolutionary, but until then, it’s reassuring knowing that people are hard at work to unlock the mysteries of auditory impairment and hopefully one day, reverse the damage.
