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April 15, 2009
Auditory Regions Of Brain Convert To Sense Of Touch, Hearing Loss Study Finds
Commonwealth University School of Medicine researchers have discovered that adult animals with hearing loss actually re-route the sense of touch into the hearing parts of the brain.
In the study, published online in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of March 23, the team reported a phenomenon known as cross-modal plasticity in the auditory system of adult animals. Cross-modal plasticity refers to the replacement of a damaged sensory system by one of the remaining ones. In this case, the sense of hearing is replaced with touch.
About 15 percent of American adults suffer from some form of hearing impairment, which can significantly impact quality of life, especially in the elderly.
Posted @ 7:59 AM
Marlee Matlin with Larry King Interview
Deaf actress Marlee Matlin has captivated millions with her film roles over the years. And she's now giving a new voice to an important issue.
Monday night on "Larry King Live," the Academy Award winner opened up to guest host Joy Behar about the sexual abuse she suffered as a child. She says the abuse led to drug use. She also opened up about her volatile relationship with actor William Hurt.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity:
Guest host Joy Behar: [Your] book is called "I'll Scream Later." Marlee, what does it mean, "I'll Scream Later?"
Marlee Matlin (through her interpreter, Jack): It goes way back to when I was in rehab. ... I got nominated for the Academy Awards while I was in rehab. And Jack asked me over the phone: "What do you want to say?" The press wants an answer. ...
Posted @ 7:59 AM
When Someone You Know Wears a Hearing Aid
My mother wears a hearing aid, which has prompted me to bring awareness of the daily problems that she, along with others that have hearing impairments, encounter on a daily basis.
My background is not with the hearing aid industry, but for the last several years I have been committed to understanding how normal-hearing individuals react to a person with an impairment. I am trying to bring awareness of hearing loss and to educate people that there is a reason for the things they do, or the way they do them.
Posted @ 7:59 AM
Sign language opens new world for teacher and students
Middletown resident Brian Barron has been named Frederick County's winner of the Comcast Parent Involvement Matters Award for his volunteer work at Myersville Elementary School.
But recognition for his work is the last reason he reports to Myersville five days a week.
Barron, who is deaf, teaches sign language to students of all grade levels. He started in his son Spencer's first-grade class several years ago, and has branched out across the school at the request of other teachers.
He teaches at least one class a day, working with teachers who carve out 20 minutes for his lessons.
Posted @ 7:57 AM
IPod Addicts Lose Hearing, Annoy the Rest of Us
I have nothing against music. As long as it’s played in the privacy of a home, car or concert hall, or at low decibel levels in public places, music is food for the soul.
That said, I don’t like music imposed on me. When I’m forced to listen to the thwack, thwack, thwack of rap emanating from the earbuds of someone else’s iPod, I just about lose it.
The reaction is visceral. My heart starts to race, my stomach tightens and I have an overwhelming impulse to grab the earbuds and separate the man from his music -- all the symptoms of Noise Aversion Syndrome (NAS).
Posted @ 7:56 AM
Deaf man escapes train collision
A deaf man was nearly hit by a train when his scooter stalled while crossing railroad tracks in Lincolnville — but he looked up, saw the train and jumped off the scooter “a split second” before the train struck it, authorities said.
The deaf-mute man is okay, Lincolnville Fire Chief Charles Gantt said. The incident occurred Monday shortly after 5 p.m. near the intersection of Owens Drive and Lincoln Avenue at a railroad crossing with no railroad crossing guard.
Lincolnville Firefighter Clark Presley and the man communicated by writing on a notepad. “We had to figure out a way to communicate with him real quick,” Gantt said, adding that the man is about 50 years old.
Posted @ 7:54 AM
Rhode Island School for the Deaf prepares musical revue
Imagine a musical staged by students who cannot hear music, but who, nevertheless, learn lyrics and dance moves and put on a show each spring.
The Rhode Island School for the Deaf will stage a musical revue Thursday and Friday, highlighting songs from musicals the school has presented over the past 14 years.
West Side Story. Footloose. The Sound of Music. The King and I. Annie. Oliver. The Wizard of Oz.
Posted @ 7:53 AM
Scranton State School for the Deaf grew from humble origins
A class of eight deaf children met for regular instruction in a room in Scranton in 1882. Their teacher, Jacob M. Koehler, was himself both deaf and mute, and his class was the first of its kind in Northeast Pennsylvania.
What started as a small local enterprise soon grew into a respected institution that we know today as the Scranton State School for the Deaf.
Mr. Koehler (who later became the Rev. Koehler) instigated the growth. The citizens of Scranton provided financial and other assistance for his small school, and they approved of his desire to expand it.
Posted @ 7:53 AM
Local church mission group helps Nicaraguan school for deaf
Barb Voss returned recently from her first mission trip overseas.
She was part of a group that went to Nicaragua to help the Christian School for the Deaf.
"I got a sense of what the missionaries go through," she said Friday. "On our last day, I couldn't stop crying as we waved goodbye."
Voss and 17 members of First Assembly of God and Eastside Assembly of God took an 11-day trip in early March to an area outside of Managua, Nicaragua. They helped Muncie missionaries Matthew and Eva Barlow, who started the school for the deaf about 10 years ago.
Posted @ 7:52 AM
Politicians reach out to the deaf
Representatives from the DA, COPE and the ANC courted at least 300 deaf people at eDeaf's offices in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, at the weekend, hoping to get their vote in the upcoming elections.
Present at the conference were DA leader Helen Zille, COPE's Gauteng premier candidate Lyndall Shope-Mafole, and ANC representative and the country's only deaf MP, Wilma Newhout-Druchen.
Several South African Sign Language interpreters were present to help the deaf and hearing communities understand each other.
Posted @ 7:51 AM
Government responds to pleas from centre for the deaf
Minister of State in the Ministry of Labour and Social Security Andrew Gallimore Thursday pledged assistance for the cash-strapped Caribbean Christian Centre for the Deaf (CCCD).
Gallimore's promise came a day after the Observer, in a lead story, highlighted the boarding school's inability to cover operational costs due to dwindling sponsorship.
"The problem right now is the day-to-day cash requirements for operating and providing for the 250 Jamaican children coming from all the different parishes; there is a general need there. And what we have been doing in our meeting earlier, is to brainstorm and to see exactly how these means can be met," Gallimore said, during a tour of the Cassia Park Road centre in St Andrew Thursday morning.
Posted @ 7:50 AM
Tampa woman is deaf, nearly blind, with will of Superwoman
When you see her, if you see her, she is waiting for the bus, smoking a cigarette with one hand and holding a white cane in the other.
She walks briskly along sidewalks and through parking lots, moving the cane in a figure eight, gliding its rounded plastic tip over bumps and cracks. Stopping when she senses something isn't right.
Her world is what she sees through two small holes the size of tightly rolled dollar bills. Born deaf, she hears none of it — not the bus, the cars, the slamming doors — though she savors the vibrations.
Posted @ 7:50 AM
Deaf teen eschews limitations, earns Boy Scout honors
Brian Hertneky, 17, and his father Tom sit facing each other in the living room of their Bethel Park home as Mr. Hertneky relays questions to his son through sign language.
Born deaf, Brian has enjoyed a childhood filled with the activities all children participate in, even Boy Scouts, for which he has a special love and for which he recently received a high honor.
Brian, son of Tom and Sue Hertneky, joined Cub Scouts in first grade, working his way through the ranks and will shortly be getting his Eagle Scout Award. He recently received the highest honor for members of the Order of the Arrow, the Vigil Award.
Posted @ 7:49 AM
Deaf Plantation students will head to Academic Bowl in Washington D.C.
Five students from South Plantation High School will head to Washington, D.C., in April to take part in an event that comes once in a lifetime.
The five have won the right to compete in the Gallaudet University Deaf and Hard of Hearing Academic Bowl.
''It is a great opportunity for them,'' said Keith Muller, head coach of the academic bowl team and deaf and hard-of-hearing family counselor at South Plantation High. ``They get to meet a whole multicultural group of deaf and hard of hearing teens like themselves in a college setting."
Posted @ 7:48 AM
Let the deaf be heard
I am the typical college student. I work hard, study hard, have great friends, but unlike most of my classmates, I’m deaf. I have been here at Columbia for two years, and in those two years I learned how Columbia’s academic system works for people who need disability services.
I don’t view myself as disabled—I never have. I am fully functioning—I eat, sleep, listen to Stevie Wonder, and mentally spaz out during midterms like every other student here. Yet I need accommodations to attend Columbia. Legally, Columbia has done everything it is required by law to do: It provides me with accommodations, but that is all the University does. The rest of my experience, specifically my social experience as a deaf person at Columbia, is up to me. As a result, I have experienced the problem of isolation in and outside of class.
Posted @ 7:48 AM
Deaf puppies get second chance at normal lives
Their ears appear attentive but for Rambo and Boomer, a pair of Australian cattle dog pups, life is a visual experience only; both are deaf.
"They do bark, but they don't know they are making a sound," said Bracken County Animal Control Officer Pat Taylor.
A genetic birth defect inherent in the breed, and a few other breeds, left the bright-eyed and energetic blue/grey colored pups with each other for company and unaware of the cacophony of sound surrounding them at the Bracken County Animal Shelter.
Posted @ 7:47 AM
Deaf student honored for achievement in classroom
There is a difference between hearing and listening, just ask Sarah Leslie of Silverton.
The 18-year-old was born deaf. She wears hearing aids in both ears and can hear some sounds but others are harder to detect.
Despite her disability, she has learned to be a good listener.
Posted @ 7:46 AM