Media Credit: Matt Nicholson Research associate Avinash Bala is part of a University research group that is measuring the dilation of test subjects' pupils to detect how people react to sound. Bala says the method could be used to test the hearing of individuals who cannot articulate what they are hearing, such as infants or those with developmental disabilities.

University researchers are hoping to better diagnose hearing problems using a seemingly unrelated sense - sight. In fact, they're borrowing methods used to study a different species altogether, the barn owl.

University researchers are measuring the dilation of pupils to detect how people react to sound. They say this method would be useful to detect hearing problems in children, infants or those with a developmental disability. The research could also provide better understanding of how the brain works and how it separates and delivers stimuli. Researchers recently presented their findings at the Association for Research in Otolaryngology meeting in Phoenix.

The number of hearing loss cases could increase as students listen to MP3 players, said Sergei Kochkin, executive director of the Better Hearing Institute.

"Everyone who shoves these fantastic devices on their ears and pumps up the music is destroying their hearing," he said, adding that 65 percent of those with hearing problems are below retirement age.

Students should be concerned about hearing problems because they could lead to time off work and lost income, Kochkin said.

University researchers, however, weren't originally concerned with human hearing.

Researchers in the Takahashi Lab on the second floor of Huestis Hall study spatial hearing and how the brain processes sound, lab director Terry Takahashi said. The researchers use the barn owl to study hearing because the owl hunts its prey at night using only auditory cues.

"It's so good at catching mice even though it can't see it," Takahashi said. "It can hear it, though."

Lab researchers found that the barn owl responded to sound through pupil dilation, Takahashi said, and researchers wanted to see if this method could have a clinical use for humans.

Researchers have been conducting experiments on undergraduate students for about a year, and the research is ongoing.

"This is a set of work that doesn't always have any immediate practical applications, but sometimes useful discoveries are a byproduct of basic research," said research associate Avinash Bala. "This just happens to be one of those times."

Takahashi Lab researchers are collaborating with psychology professor Paul Dassonville and are using psychology lab equipment to conduct the experiments, Bala said.

Subjects - University undergraduates with no hearing problems - sit at a computer screen equipped with an infrared camera that measures pupil dilation when a sound is played, Bala said. So far, the results have been promising.

If the method continues to produce accurate results in humans, the medical community could use the technique because it doesn't require patient participation, Bala said.

Typical hearing exams require patients to respond to a tone heard through headphones, Bala said. The pupil dilation method could apply to those who are unable to respond to such tests, such as children and infants, or those who suffer from a developmental disability or are receiving treatment for a disease.

"Cancer patients can receive a drug that can poison the ear and hearing," Takahashi said. "You need to keep track of that, and you would never want to cancel out the effects of cancer in order to go deaf."

Researchers say they would like to test the method on people with hearing problems. They would also like to find a way to simplify the pupil dilation testing process.

The equipment is costly, and subjects have to keep their head in one place on a chin rest, Takahashi said. Infants would likely move their head and eyes around.

"To make this really useful, we're going to have to solve these problems," Takahashi said. "Part of it right now is an engineering problem."

tdavis@dailyemerald.com

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