hearing

A group of leading researchers working on hearing loss have created mice whose hearing worsens as they age, as mirror counterparts to humans. But these mice fail to breed well, which led the University of Rochester group to crossbreed them with mice that had great sex drives but even worse hearing loss in their old age. The result was a new super breed that is prolific and has superb hearing.

It sounds different because it is different. "When you speak, the vocal folds in your throat vibrate, which causes your skin, skull and oral cavities to also vibrate, and we perceive this as sound," explains Ben Hornsby, a professor of audiology at Vanderbilt University. The vibrations mix with the sound waves traveling from your mouth to your eardrum, giving your voice a quality — generally a deeper, more dignified sound — that no one else hears.

Thanks to a new technology that is still a little wet behind the ears, scientists now have reason to believe that stem cells have the potential to restore hearing loss. Although the cutting-edge science behind this project is still in the early research stage, scientist at the University of Sheffield have successfully induced fetal stem cells to behave like sensory hair cells and auditory neurons, two types of cells vital to a functioning auditory system.