Early Indicators Of Noise Injury: Are Decreased Auditory Processing Skills Evident In Noise-exposed Adults Prior To Diagnosis Of Hearing Loss?
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$367,605.00
Summary
Recent research indicates that noise-exposed individuals with similar hearing thresholds to non-noise exposed counterparts are more likely to have diminished temporal and spectral auditory processing abilities. This research aims to determine the relationship between noise exposure levels and auditory processing difficulties; the influence of musical training in ameliorating these difficulties; and a neurological model of causation, operation and possible remediation of these difficulties.
Organization Of Descending Auditory Projections From Inferior Colliculus To Cochlear Nucleus
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$473,121.00
Summary
Sensory information gains awareness by ascending brain pathways to reach consciousness. Descending projections, however, have grown in importance because of implications for feedback management of ascending signals. Studies of these pathways will provide insight into auditory processing with respect to selective volume control, calibration adjustments between the two ears, and the extraction of signals from background noise. The data could lead to new strategies for treating hearing disorders.
Development Of The Listening In Spatialized Noise - Tonal Test (or LiSN-T)
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$227,136.00
Summary
In this project a novel listening test software will be developed for diagnosing spatial processing disorder in children. These children often have difficulties in understanding teachers in classrooms, which can significantly impact their ability to learn. The developed software will be specifically designed for diagnosing 5-year old children, before they enter primary school, and in contrast to existing tests will be independent of their language background.
Studies Of The Effects Of Asymmetric Hearing Loss On The Brain
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$920,076.00
Summary
Hearing loss impairs the normal development and maintenance of auditory pathways. Irreversible pathologies persist when hearing is not restored in a timely manner. While cochlear implantation is the accepted treatment for profound sensorineural hearing loss, there is significant variability in outcomes. Some of this variability is linked to the degree of hearing asymmetry. Thus, we propose to study brain changes in the auditory system that accompany asymmetric hearing impairment.
Establishing The Physiological And Sleep Disruption Characteristics Of Wind Farm Versus Traffic Noise Disturbances In Sleep
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$1,357,652.00
Summary
Good sleep is essential for normal daytime functioning and health. Wind farm noise includes audible and unusually low frequency sound components, including infrasound, that could potentially disturb sleep through chronic sleep disruption and/or insomnia. This project will, for the first time, directly evaluate the sleep and physiological disturbance characteristics of wind farm noise compared to traffic noise reproduced in a specialised and carefully controlled laboratory environment.
Predicting Language Skills From Early Auditory Speech Discrimination In Infants With Hearing Loss: Implications For Early Management And Intervention
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$706,113.00
Summary
Now that newborn hearing checks are available, hearing loss can be picked up soon after birth and hearing aids are fitted shortly after. Although procedures exist for checking that the devices make sounds audible, there is no way to evaluate their effectiveness for supporting a child’s auditory discrimination. This study aims to 1) develop new clinical tools for assessing infants’ auditory discrimination, and 2) determine whether early discrimination predicts spoken language at 3 years of age.
Information Delivery from Segmented Textual Data Streams. This project will contribute to the advancement of ICT innovation in Australia by developing a robust, reusable language understanding engine. The technology will be tailored to web applications, in the form of a conceptually-aware web search engine capable of tracking cross-document dialogues and identifying the core semantic thread of the dialogue. It will place Australia at the forefront of next-generation language technology developme ....Information Delivery from Segmented Textual Data Streams. This project will contribute to the advancement of ICT innovation in Australia by developing a robust, reusable language understanding engine. The technology will be tailored to web applications, in the form of a conceptually-aware web search engine capable of tracking cross-document dialogues and identifying the core semantic thread of the dialogue. It will place Australia at the forefront of next-generation language technology development, with applications in areas including concept-based multi-document summarisation and email surveillance.Read moreRead less
A scalable and portable question-answering system. The current availability of large volumes of free text digitally stored demands the development of methodologies that can automatically find specific answers to user questions about this "unstructured" information. The goal of this project is to develop a scalable portable and domain-independent real-time natural-language question-answering system that explores the logical contents of the text. To achieve this we will fuse current approaches to ....A scalable and portable question-answering system. The current availability of large volumes of free text digitally stored demands the development of methodologies that can automatically find specific answers to user questions about this "unstructured" information. The goal of this project is to develop a scalable portable and domain-independent real-time natural-language question-answering system that explores the logical contents of the text. To achieve this we will fuse current approaches to question answering with approaches that look at the logical contents of the questions and answer candidates. A central part of the project will be the characterisation of the optimal logical forms, the determination of efficient methods to create and store sentence logical forms of potentially large volumes of text, and the treatment of difficult questions by incorporating summarisation and text generation techniques.Read moreRead less
Advanced Capture, Analysis and Compression of Facial Images. Facial image processing is an area of research that holds an important key to future advances in intelligent human-to-computer and human-to-human systems. This project will investigate and develop superior approaches to image capturing of human faces for subsequent analysis and compression. It aims to develop innovative techniques to detect, extract and recognise faces, as well as more efficient ways to compress facial image data. This ....Advanced Capture, Analysis and Compression of Facial Images. Facial image processing is an area of research that holds an important key to future advances in intelligent human-to-computer and human-to-human systems. This project will investigate and develop superior approaches to image capturing of human faces for subsequent analysis and compression. It aims to develop innovative techniques to detect, extract and recognise faces, as well as more efficient ways to compress facial image data. This project will provide advanced Australian technology with applications in some of the world's fastest growing markets, including crowd surveillance, computer user interface, videoconferencing, and multimedia systems.Read moreRead less