Hearing
Broadcast starting September 17, 2008

Click here for a free transcript of the program on Hearing

Guests include Dr. Brenda Ryals, a professor and hearing researcher at James Madison University; Dr. Albert Bregman, a professor of psychology and hearing researcher at McGill University in Montreal, Canada; Dr. Sarah Woolley, a postdoctoral fellow in Behavioral Neurobiology at The University of California at Berkeley; Dr. Natan Bauman, the founder and director of The Hearing, Balance and Speech Center in Connecticut; Ms. Kathy Peck, the founder of the grassroots organization H.E.A.R - Hearing Education and Awareness for Rockers; Dr. David Silbersweig, a neurologist and psychiatrist who directs the neuropsychiatry program at Cornell University; and Mr. Randy Thom, a re-recording mixer and sound designer for Skywalker Sound, a division of Lucas Digital. Commentator John Hockenberry explains why he thinks, of all the senses "it's clear that hearing has the most imagination."

Host Dr. Fred Goodwin begins with an essay in which he says that the topic of hearing hits home for him. His father, one of his sons, and he, himself, suffer from a congenital right-sided hearing loss. He offers a few personal stories that illustrate many of the issues we cover in program. He says these stories show just how vital our hearing is for connecting with other people and interacting with the world around us. For example, when he held staff meetings as director of the National Institute of Mental Health, he was not consistently able to hear what was said by people on his right, so most of his responses were to the people on his left. He assumes that produced some consternation, since, of course, everyone wanted the director's ear, so to speak. Once hearing aid technology improved enough to allow for aids that sit entirely within the ear canal, he began wearing one. More recently, he's switched to the new digital hearing aids, which selectively amplify the sound frequencies that represent each wearer's particular kind of loss. In his case, it's the frequencies of most female voices. As he says, the new hearing aids are great - and his wife is very pleased.

We then hear from Mr. Randy Thom, a true master of movie sound design. Since 1979, he has been working as a re-recording mixer and sound designer for Skywalker Sound, a division of Lucas Digital, and one of the largest and most versatile audio post-production facilities in the industry. Mr. Thom won an Academy Award for his work on The Right Stuff, and he's been nominated for numerous others for films including Castaway, Contact, Forrest Gump, and Return of the Jedi. Most recently, he did the sound design for Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. He demonstrates some of the tricks of the trade. For example, often a director will come to him with a scene of two people talking on a porch, and he will ask Mr. Thom to do something with sound to make the scene less dark, more optimistic. In that case, Mr. Thom says he really has only one option -- songbirds. But, when he wants to make a scene more ominous, he has a much larger palette with which to work. He offers examples of sound effects created for Star Wars (which he did not work on personally) and Castaway. To contact Mr. Thom or learn more about Skywalker Sound, please visit: www.skysound.com.

Then, Dr. Goodwin interviews Dr. Brenda Ryals, a professor and hearing researcher at James Madison University, and Dr. Albert Bregman, a professor of psychology and hearing researcher at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He is the author of Auditory Scene Analysis: The Perceptual Organization of Sound and creator of Demonstrations of Auditory Scene Analysis, a CD that gives examples of how we hear and pick out sounds in the environment. Dr. Ryals begins by describing, in basic terms, how the ear works. Sound is transmitted through the middle ear to the inner ear, where sensory cells, called hair cells, convert that sound into signals that are interpreted by the brain. Dr. Bregman then describes his work, which focuses on understanding how we pick out sounds from a mixture. He says that if you ask someone how they do it, they say, 'I just listen to the sound,' but If you look at what's actually happening on the eardrum, there is no separate set of sounds; all you have is the sum of all the sounds. He is interested in learning how the brain decomposes that mixture to figure out the original source of each sound. He then offers a demonstration from his CD of one of the tricks our brain uses to try to figure out which sounds go together. In this example, we learn that we are likely to group together sounds of similar frequency and assume they are generated by the same "event." Dr. Ryals then offers some thoughts on how hearing differs across species. Her work focuses on birds, who have an ability humans and other mammals do not have -- if the hair cells in their ears are killed, they will regenerate. In other words, a deafened bird will regain its hearing. Many researchers have been trying to figure out a way to use this knowledge to figure out how to restore human hearing loss, but so far, they have had no luck. They continue to try, and they are also trying to find out as much as possible about why and how cells are damaged -- and how to stop that damage -- to prevent hearing loss, so that we would not have to regenerate our sensory cells. There's a lot of progress on this front. Dr. Ryals then discusses recent research on hearing loss. Dr. Ryals says hearing loss is most often caused by either environmental factors, such as noise or certain powerful antibiotics (which are now carefully monitored) or health-related factors, such as heart disease or smoking. Genetic predisposition also plays a big role. For people -- especially children -- with profound hearing loss, cochlear implants help enormously with the development of speech and language abilities. Hearing aid technology has also improved greatly, and the new digital hearing aids try to take advantage of some of the "tricks" Dr. Bregman mentioned and use digital processors to mimic the way our brains interpret sound. Dr. Brenda Ryals described the ability of birds to regenerate the hair cells in their ears - so that even if they're deafened, they regain the ability to hear.

To contact Dr. Ryals, please write to: Dr. Brenda Ryals, Auditory Research Laboratory, James Madison University, 1016 Health and Human Services Building, MSC 4304, Harrisonburg, Virginia 22807. Or visit: www.csd.jmu.edu/arl. To contact Dr. Bregman, please write to: Dr. Albert Bregman, Department of Psychology, 1205 Dr. Penfield Avenue, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3A 1B1. Or visit: www.psych.mcgill.ca. To order Dr. Bregman's book, click here. To order his CD, click here.

Next, The Infinite Mind's Marit Haahr reports on exciting research in this area conducted by Dr. Sarah Woolley, a postdoctoral fellow in Behavioral Neurobiology at The University of California at Berkeley. Dr. Woolley began her work as a graduate student with Dr. Ed Rubel at the University of Washington. Her work has implications not only for how we hear, but how we learn and remember. To learn more about Dr. Woolley's work on hair cell regeneration, please visit: http://depts.washington.edu/rubelab.We all hear a ringing or buzzing in our ears from time to time. Now imagine that ringing never went away. That's what it's like for the millions of Americans who suffer from tinnitus. Tinnitus can be caused by a variety of factors, but one of the biggest culprits is loud music and noise. Dr. Goodwin interviews Dr. Natan Bauman, who has a doctoral degree in audiology and is the founder and director of The Hearing, Balance and Speech Center in Connecticut, and Ms. Kathy Peck, a former bass player and singer for the San Francisco rock band The Contractions. In 1988, after developing tinnitus and hearing loss, she launched a grassroots organization called H.E.A.R - Hearing Education and Awareness for Rockers. Ms. Peck begins by explaining that she first experiences a loud ringing in her ears after playing a concert opening for Duran Duran at the Oakland Coliseum. In her case, this was accompanied by hearing loss. She then plays a public service announcement made by her organization, H.E.A.R, which demonstrates the high-frequency sound often heard by people with tinnitus. Dr. Bauman then says there are many misconceptions about tinnitus, and, as a result, many people become overwhelmed by tinnitus, wondering if they're going crazy or it is a sign of hearing loss or something growing in their brain. More often than not, it is caused by damage to the hair cells in the ears, which can also cause hearing loss (as when loud music or noise is to blame), but not all people with tinnitus have hearing loss and not all people with hearing loss have tinnitus. Ms. Peck says that people should treat ringing in their ears as a warning sign (even if it ends up going away on its own). She cautions people to wear ear protection. Her group was instrumental in passing an ear plug ordinance in San Francisco, requiring that ear plugs be made available in clubs with a capacity for 500 or more people. Dr. Bauman concludes by saying that, in the past, people were often told they just had to live with tinnitus, but that's not true anymore. The treatment he recommends - tinnitus retraining therapy -- has a success rate of 80-85%. Although it does not make the sound disappear, it teaches people to tune out the sound (with the help of a noise-generating device and counseling), so it no longer bothers them. To contact Dr. Bauman, please write to Dr. Natan Bauman, Director, The Hearing, Balance & Speech Center, 2661 Dixwell Avenue, Hamden, CT 06518. Or visit: www.hearingbalance.com.To contact Ms. Peck or learn more about H.E.A.R please write to: Ms. Kathy Peck, Executive Director, H.E.A.R., 1405 Lyon St., San Francisco, CA 94115. Or email: hear@hearnet.com. Or visit www.hearnet.com.

How is it possible to hear voices that aren't there? Next, we hear from Edith Shuttleworth, a woman with schizophrenia who describes her auditory hallucinations. She was originally recorded for our 2001 show "Schizophrenia: Second Chances." Ms. Shuttleworth has been hearing voices since she was nine (an unusually early age). She became homeless in her twenties. Now, she takes a medication called Zyprexa, one of the new atypical antipsychotics. She still hears voices sometimes, but now she can distinguish the voices from her true self. Then, to explore what's happening in the brain when people hear auditory hallucinations, Dr. Goodwin interviews Dr. David Silbersweig, a neurologist and psychiatrist who directs the neuropsychiatry program at Cornell University. Dr. Silbersweig begins by describing some characteristics typical of the voices people with schizophrenia hear -- they sound like they're coming from one or more people; they can be specific or vague; they can sound as if they're coming from in front of the person, from the side, or from somewhere more ethereal; they are usually derogatory, and sometimes they give a running commentary on what the person is doing, sometimes they just hurl insults. The person perceives the voices as real, and when the person is psychotic, he or she believes the veracity of what they're saying and often feels emotional connections to their comments. Dr. Silbersweig has conducted PET scans and fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) scans to observe what is going on in the brain when people are having these auditory hallucinations. He found that when people with schizophrenia hear voices, there is activity in the auditory-language areas of the cortex, just as if they were hearing voices from the outside world. This is striking because, of course, it is silent in the scanner. There is also activation of areas deep in the brain that are connected to emotion, memory, and attention. These areas are not typically active when people are listening to real voices. Dr. Silbersweig believes it is the interaction between these surface areas and deep areas that is important in understanding auditory hallucinations. He also discusses how hearing auditory hallucinations differs from things like dreaming and auditory imagery (i.e. being able to conjure someone's voice in your mind) in people without schizophrenia. During mental imagery tasks, people with schizophrenia show a deficit in activity in an area of the frontal lobe of the brain that is important for mental control. This may explain the involuntary nature of the hallucinations. To contact Dr. Silbersweig, please write to: Dr. David Silbersweig, Department of Psychiatry, Box 140, Room F1303, Cornell Medical College, 1300 York Avenue, New York, NY 10021. Or visit: www.med.cornell.edu.

Finally, commentator John Hockenberry explains why he thinks, "Of all the senses...it's clear that hearing has the most imagination."

- Marit Haahr

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