Current projects
Below is a list of our ongoing research projects in alphabetical order by title. Each lists all investigators. To search by key word, author, or title press ‘Control F’ then enter search terms.
Audiology applications of conversational Artificial Intelligence: remote, natural and automated testing of hearing and device prescription
Funder:
Medical Research Council – Doctoral Training Partnership.
Staff involved:
Mohsen Fatehifar, Josef Schlittenlacher, David Wong, Timothy Cootes, Kevin Munro.
Project overview:
This project aims to propose a new way of conducting hearing tests by using text-to-speech and automatic speech recognition models, without the need to involve a hearing professional. The project enables remote, natural, and automated testing of hearing capability.
These technologies can also be used to evaluate various configurations of hearing devices without any human interaction. For example, the technology can be used to prescribe amplification for someone with a hearing loss, in a way that provides the best speech intangibility to the patient.
Caring for hearing aid use in babies (CHerUB)
Funder:
Medical Research Council (MRC), National Deaf Children’s Society.
Staff involved:
Kevin Munro, Ciara Kelly, Anisa Visram, Chris Armitage, Lindsey Jones, Helen Chilton.
Project overview:
Consistent use of hearing aids from an early age is associated with better language outcomes for babies and toddlers with hearing loss/deafness. However, hearing aid use is at its lowest and most variable in the early years and families face many challenges when it comes to achieving consistent hearing aid use.
Working closely with parents, Teachers of the Deaf and Audiologists, the CHerUB project aims to develop a deeper understanding of the barriers and facilitators to infant hearing aid use, to then identify how best to support families and develop an intervention to increase infant hearing aid use.
Clinical applications of Ecological Momentary Assessment for hearing healthcare: Real world of hearing loss-related stigma and affiliate stigma
Funder:
Sonova.
Staff involved:
Suhani Pattanshetti, Gabrielle Saunders, Sam Couth.
External: Charlotte Vercammen.
Project overview:
This PhD project aims to find a sensitive unobtrusive way to measure hearing-related stigma in both the person with hearing loss and their communication partner(s).
Retrospective questionnaires or interviews provide rich data but encounter recall bias, Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) avoids recall bias but can be intrusive. Measures such as heart rate, blood pressure and electrodermal activity can be assessed in the real world in real time via a smart watch but they have not been validated as measures of hearing-related stigma.
In this project, we will aim to combine these three types of measurement approach to measure hearing-related sigma.
Communication strategies for increased social participation
Funder:
Widex A/S.
Staff involved:
Gabrielle Saunders, Antje Heinrich, Gemma Perfect External: Karolina Smeds.
Project overview:
The aim of this study is to develop an easy-to-use Personalized Communication Strategies Guide that increases communication success. The guide will be a supplement to hearing aid use and will be offered to patients using a shared-decision-making approach to ensure it meets their preferences and needs.
To this end we are first conducting surveys of audiologists and patients to determine the communication strategies people with hearing loss use and find helpful in daily life. We will then conduct an effectiveness trial of the guide with first-time hearing-aid users.
The effects on auditory function of radiotherapy and chemotherapy treatments for head and neck tumours (EARAD)
Funder:
Marston Scholarship, BRC Advanced Radiotherapy and Hearing Health themes.
Staff involved:
Jenna Littlejohn, Chris Plack, James Price, Marcel van Herk, Joe Ward, Leah Mcgrath, Karen Farrow.
Project overview:
The EARAD project is designed to evaluate the effects of radiotherapy and combined chemoradiotherapy treatments (CCRTs), both known to cause damage to the cochlea and auditory brainstem (ototoxicity).
The overall aim is to provide data that will define the amount of radiotherapy needed to damage individual substructures of the auditory pathway so that a better balance can be made between ototoxic hearing loss and tumour control during radiotherapy for head and neck cancer.
EASY LISTENING (EASYLI): Optimising the consequences of effortful listening in occupational settings
Funder:
HORIZON-MSCA-2022-DN-01- MSCA Doctoral Networks 2022.
Staff involved:
Rebecca Millman, Gabrielle Saunders.
Externals: Adriana Zekveld (PI), Torsten Dau (supervisor). Dorothea Wendt (supervisor), Hamish Innes-Brown (supervisor).
Project overview:
EASYLI aims to train a new generation of entrepreneurial scientists who can develop and apply an interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral toolbox of ambulatory and laboratory measures of listening effort and listening value (i.e. the costs and benefits of effortful listening).
They will be able to harness the potential of real-time acoustic scene analysis, virtual acoustics (VA), and physiological and subjective measures to predict and mitigate the effect of acoustically challenging scenarios on relevant behavioural, occupational and health outcomes.
Extended high-frequency hearing
Funder:
NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Centre in Hearing Health, National Institutes of Health.
Staff involved:
Melanie Lough, Garreth Prendergast, David Moore.
Project overview:
Extended high-frequency (EHF) hearing, i.e. beyond the range of hearing thresholds that are currently measured in clinical audiometry, may be a sensitive predictor of age-related hearing loss that can identify individuals at risk of hearing loss much earlier in life. EHF hearing may be used to predict which individual young adults, adolescents or even children are likely to develop hearing loss in the conventional range of frequencies (0.25 – 8 kHz) later in life.
This could lead to early prevention on an individualised basis. Preventative measures might include advice on protecting hearing or, in the future, taking certain drugs found to prevent hearing loss. We have also found that preventing access to EHF results in poorer performance (SRT) on speech-in-noise, as tested with the DIN.
Follow-up and structured monitoring for adults offered a NHS hearing aid for the first time (FAMOUS)
Funder:
National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).
Staff involved:
Kevin Munro on behalf of the FAMOUS team and Biomedical Research Centre partners.
Project overview:
The follow-up and monitoring of new adult hearing aid users is ill-defined and non-evidence based. The government, via the NIHR Health Technology Assessment programme (NIHR131159), has funded a national project to address this gap-in-knowledge. The aim is to investigate the clinical and cost-effectiveness of a follow-up and monitoring intervention compared to usual care.
The project involves recruitment of a total of around 3,600 new adult hearing aid users across as many as 40 NHS audiology services. The project is a collaboration between the three NIHR Biomedical Research centres with a hearing research theme (Manchester, Nottingham and University College London Hospital).
That looks noisy: Using visual cues to improve clinical assessment of self-reported hearing
Funder:
NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Centre.
Staff involved:
Gabrielle Saunders, Emanuele Perugia, Michael Loughran, Sam Couth.
Project overview:
Questionnaires used to assess perceived hearing difficulties require individuals to rate their listening difficulty based on written descriptions of communication situations (e.g. in a busy restaurant).
In order to increase accessibility for individuals with low literacy/who speak a different language, increase test-retest reliability, and minimise differences arising due to interpretation of written text, we are developing an image-based questionnaire that uses photographs instead of written descriptions of communication situations.
The image-based questionnaire will evaluate hearing in everyday situations, be clinically practical (take less than five minutes to complete), highly relatable (images will be chosen by people with hearing loss), and highly accessible.
The feasibility of estimating the prevalence of hearing loss in people with dementia
Funder:
NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Centre.
Staff involved:
Hannah Cross, Piers Dawes, Laura Brown, Chris Armitage, Iracema Leroi, Rebecca Millman.
Project overview:
The risk of developing dementia and hearing loss increases with age, leading to a significant overlap of these conditions. Detecting and managing hearing difficulties in individuals with dementia is crucial, as untreated hearing loss can exacerbate confusion, depression, social isolation, and dementia-related symptoms.
However, the prevalence rate of hearing loss in people with dementia remains unknown in the UK. Prior to conducting a large-scale study to estimate this prevalence, we will assess the reliability and acceptability of hearing tests for this population and explore participant recruitment and retention strategies, both for people living in the community and in care homes.
We will also use qualitative interviews to understand the reasons behind unidentified hearing loss in people with dementia, aiming to identify barriers to engaging with audiology services. The results will be used to propose recommendations for improved hearing assessments and audiology pathways tailored to individuals with dementia.
Turn up, plug in, rock out: An intervention study to promote hearing protection uptake and sustained use for noisy recreational settings.
Funder:
NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Centre (BRS), The University of Manchester, Medical Research Council, Manchester Centre for Health Psychology.
Staff involved:
Samuel Couth, Michael Loughran, Chris Armitage, Chris Plack, Mel Lough, Karolina Kluk, Anisa Visram.
Project overview:
Recent epidemiological studies have shown that younger and older adults are exposing themselves to noisy recreational activities (e.g. festivals, concerts, nightclubs, etc.) that have the potential to cause noise-induced hearing loss and tinnitus.
However, only 2% of attendees in the UK regularly using hearing protection, and so there is a clear risk of hearing damage for the 34 million people who attend these events in the UK per annum.
The aim of this study is to provide empirical evidence on whether the provision of good quality earplugs leads to uptake and sustained use of recreational hearing protection behaviours, and whether additional behaviour change techniques can be used to further improve uptake and sustained use.
Understanding the consequences of recreational noise exposure
Funder:
Medical Research Council.
Staff involved:
Chris Plack, Kevin Munro, Karolina Kluk, Rebecca Millman, Garreth Prendergast, Michael Stone, Hannah Guest, Carlyn Murray, Stephen Roberts.
External: Sue Francis (University of Nottingham), Rebecca Dewey (University of Nottingham).
Project overview:
In partnership with the University of Nottingham, the research studies in our programme address crucial unanswered questions:
- Just how damaging are concerts, nightclubs, and earphones?
- Which parts of the ears and nervous system are affected?
- Who is most at risk, and when?
We test for hearing damage that would not show up on standard hearing tests, using electrophysiology, high-frequency measures, and brain imaging. Our participants include teenagers, concert-goers, people with tinnitus, and noise-exposed workers. Online listening tests let us look at hearing worldwide. Unlike most noise research, we track hearing over time, giving a much clearer picture of the effects of noise.
Markers of Everyday Life Listening Intentions and Outcomes (MELLIO)
Funder:
William Demant Foundation.
Staff involved:
Scott Bannister, Gabrielle Saunders, Helen Whiston. External-Jeppe Hoy Christensen.
Project overview:
Satisfaction with hearing, and particularly with hearing aids, depends on the combination of the listening condition (e.g., amount of background noise) and the listening intention. This project will help us to better understand ‘listening intentions’ in everyday life. What we mean by this is finding out what you are trying to hear or listen to at any point in time.