subject: The Many Causes Of Hearing Loss [print this page] It is clear that this 5 year old does not have the sense of hearing. Blond, wide eyed, he does respond to his parents voices or other sounds. The boy took part in many tests already that looked into his hearing.
Doctors were able to notice that the boy could not hear. Research on other ways to check for signs of deafness on children has been carried out by this professor who is from the communicative Disorders at the University Of Wisconsin School Of Medicine. If a child is diagnosed as suffering from a hearing impairment when something else may be wrong, precious time and money can be wasted on futile and frustrating attempts at treatment.
The doctors will give out sounds to the child and then see what and how they react to it. In this case, brain waves are examined when the sound is given. Specially regulated sounds are presented to the child through earphones. Electrodes are attached to his head, and the brain waves picked up by the electrodes are fed into an electroencephalograph or EEG, and then into an average response computer.
Using an EEG the brain waves will be made into a graph. The reaction of the brain to the sound is then calculated using the computer to reach a statistic. Even the smallest reaction will be taking into account with this procedure. According to the same professor, the research they are doing will make known other ways of identifying problems in children. He is also working with University of Wisconsin personnel interested in speech and hearing and pediatrics.
There is lesser damage to the child one their hearing problems are seen earlier as treatment can start right way. Sometimes even infants are tested. The hearing of the new born babies will be tested on the future by electric brain response tests they say.
There are greater chances for a normal life for a kid whose hearing disabilities are seen earlier then usual. One cannot speak when they cannot hear. Much effort will be put into finding out more about the process of hearing in infants and children. They are trying to find ways of learning if a child is suffering from deafness or whether general retardation or mental disturbance is causing a child's learning problems. One way to carry on with the research is to look at children who can hear normally and compare that with the handicapped children. Here, testing adults first is done and then children who have higher chances of getting hearing loss. It is in the research of the professors to learn more about the first reaction of people when they hear a sound being played. They want to determine what hearing thresholds or abilities are in infants and at what age the brain's responses to sound stabilize.
