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posted by Fnord666 on Friday January 17 2020, @09:51AM   Printer-friendly
from the I-see-^W-hear-what-you-did-there dept.

Researchers test hearing by looking at dilation of people's eyes:

University of Oregon neuroscientists have shown that a person's hearing can be assessed by measuring dilation of the pupils in eyes, a method that is as sensitive as traditional methods of testing hearing.

The approach is being developed as a potential way to test hearing in babies, young adults with developmental disabilities and adults suffering from a stroke or illness -- populations where direct responses are not possible.

In the experiments, changes in pupil size of 31 adults were monitored with eye-tracking technology for about three seconds as they performed a traditional tone-based hearing test while also staring at an object on a monitor. Dilation in all subjects matched their subsequent push-button responses, when prompted by a question mark on the screen, signifying whether or not a tone was heard.

The project, detailed in an open-access paper published online last month in the Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology, was inspired more than a decade ago when the study's lead author, Avinash Singh Bala, noticed changes in the pupils of barn owls in response to unexpected noises in their environment.

Avinash D. S. Bala, Elizabeth A. Whitchurch, Terry T. Takahashi. Human Auditory Detection and Discrimination Measured with the Pupil Dilation Response. Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology, 2019; DOI: 10.1007/s10162-019-00739-x


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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Bot on Friday January 17 2020, @10:47AM (2 children)

    by Bot (3902) on Friday January 17 2020, @10:47AM (#944482) Journal

    The brain detects a sound and instinctively goes in mild alarm mode, so the pupils dilate to let more signal in and pinpoint the reason. Everybody who played with a cat likely notice the huge dilation of the pupils who spot the toy.

    If the sound is justin bieber's you go directly into panic mode but this is a different mechanism.

    --
    Account abandoned.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 17 2020, @12:04PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 17 2020, @12:04PM (#944503)

      So you think this response is genetic (instinct) and not learned? Further studies on babies (over time, as they grow up) may be instructive.

      Newborn humans don't "see" much at all, it takes time for the brain to learn to interpret the signals from the eyes. This book, "World of the Newborn" by Maurer describes a variety of experiments that have been run on infants to better map out how sensing develops.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 17 2020, @03:45PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 17 2020, @03:45PM (#944559)

        Takahashi and Bala are now part of a university-supported collaboration with Dare Baldwin, a UO psychology professor, to test the approach in babies. The two neuroscientists also have formed a UO spinout, Perceptivo LLC, to pursue development of an infant-hearing assessment.

        It seems that they hypothesize this is instinctive, and wish to test that.

        It seems a likely thing, but better to test than to assume.

  • (Score: 2) by MostCynical on Friday January 17 2020, @11:04AM

    by MostCynical (2589) on Friday January 17 2020, @11:04AM (#944488) Journal

    what did you say?

    --
    "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
  • (Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Friday January 17 2020, @12:16PM

    by Rosco P. Coltrane (4757) on Friday January 17 2020, @12:16PM (#944505)

    Standard pupil dilation hearing test: shout in someone's ear "I'm gonna finger your anus now!" If their pupils dilate, they heard you alright.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 17 2020, @08:09PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 17 2020, @08:09PM (#944696)

    The stereotypical old person comment, "I can't hear without my glasses".

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