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Launched today: MRC public science experiment on hearing



Dear AuditoryListers

This was launched today ... we encourage you all to give it a go, and
pass the email onto all who may be interested ...

http://www.100yearsofamplifiedmusic.org/

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A Century of Amplified Music -- a public science experiment on whether a
lifetime of loud music exposure is linked to hearing loss

http://www.100yearsofamplifiedmusic.org/

To round off a year of the Medical Research Council’s Centenary
celebrations, researchers from MRC Institute of Hearing Research and the
NIHR Nottingham Hearing Biomedical Research Unit are today launching a
mass public experiment to see if listening to loud music over a lifetime
is linked to hearing problems.

Amplified music has been around for about as long as the Medical
Research Council. There has been revolution after revolution in music
amplification; we can now play music for hours at levels that could be
potentially damaging. There’s always been the temptation to turn the
music up loud. We want to find out if prolonged exposure to loud music
really does cause hearing problems

In the experiment, participants are asked to complete a short
questionnaire about how much loud music listening they have done across
their life (e.g. “How often would you say you went to gigs, concerts,
and festivals?”). The questions cover gigs, clubs, and portable audio
devices such as MP3/Walkmans, and are followed by a standard set of
questions asking about their hearing. They are then asked to do a short
listening experiment (a triple-digit speech in noise test), measuring
their ability to identify words in a background of noise.


Credits: The experiment was produced by hearing scientists at the MRC
Institute of Hearing Research in Nottingham and Glasgow (Dr Michael
Akeroyd, Dr Bill Whitmer, Professor David Moore) and the NIHR Nottingham
Hearing Biomedical Research Unit (Robert Mackinnon and Dr
Heather Fortnum). The experiment was funded by the Medical Research
Foundation.


Dr Michael A Akeroyd
MRC/CSO Institute of Hearing Research - Scottish Section
www.ihr.mrc.ac.uk     maa@xxxxxxxxxxxxx