What Parents Should Know About Newborn Hearing Screenings

The AHA! Team — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 05:09:29 +0000

Children’s Hospital Los Angeles via Newswise – Early detection of hearing loss in children is imperative. Learn what the result of your kid’s hearing test means—and what you need to do about it next. In the United States, approximately 3 out of every 1,000 infants are born with hearing loss. Surprisingly, over 90% of these children are born to parents who themselves have normal hearing. As mandated by state regulations, newborn hearing screenings are performed in all hospitals where babies are delivered. These screenings are essential for early detection, which Kristina Rousso, AuD, an audiologist with the California Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and Related Disabilities (CA-LEND) training program at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, says is crucial for achieving optimal outcomes in a child’s development. Babies’ brains “From birth, babies’ brains are constantly taking in information to support development of listening, language, and reading,” Dr. Rousso says. Dr. Rousso says that she and her colleagues follow the Joint Committee on Infant Hearing Guidelines 1:3:6 model—identification through screening by 1 month of age; diagnosis of hearing level and type with a pediatric audiologist by 3 months of age; and treatment with hearing devices by 6 months of age. What can cause hearing loss at birth? Below are some of the reasons that a baby may be born with hearing loss: Genetic factors Maternal viruses during pregnancy, such as cytomegalovirus (CMV) and rubella Extended stays in neonatal intensive care, due to risk factors such as low birth weight, lack of oxygen, and phototherapy treatment Two types of newborn hearing screenings There are two primary types of newborn hearing screenings: otoacoustic emissions (OAE) and auditory brainstem response (ABR). “Both are painless, fast, and easy to measure,” Dr. Rousso says. Otoacoustic emissions involves playing different sounds into the baby’s ear to detect a response from the inner ear Auditory brainstem response measures the brain’s response to sounds and volume levels through electrodes placed on the baby’s head during sleep. Hearing screenings provide a “pass” or “refer” result. Here is what each means. Pass: A “pass” indicates your baby likely has normal to near-normal hearing. “However,” Dr. Rousso says, “it’s still important to monitor speech and language development and the baby’s responses to different sounds in the environment.” If your baby does not respond to sounds appropriately at home, or their speech and language development is not advancing, schedule a hearing test appointment with a pediatric audiologist, who can evaluate and treat your child for possible hearing loss. Refer: A ”refer” result means that more information is needed to determine if the baby has hearing loss in one or both ears. A second hearing test will be administered before you and your baby are discharged. If the baby does not pass the second time, you will be referred to a pediatric audiologist for a comprehensive diagnostic evaluation. Dr. Rousso emphasizes the importance of promptly taking your baby to a pediatric audiologist for a complete evaluation if the baby does not pass the hearing screen, or if the baby is not developing speech or language. The sooner hearing loss is diagnosed and treated, the faster a baby’s brain can start to develop speech and language. To read the original article click here.

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Newfound Ability to Change Baby Brain Activity Could Lead to Rehabilitation for Injured Brains

AHA Publisher — Tue, 24 Nov 2020 08:00:34 +0000

King’s College London via EurekAlert – Researchers from King’s College London have identified the brain activity for the first time in a newborn baby when they are learning an association between different types of sensory experiences. Using advanced MRI scanning techniques and robotics, the researchers found that a baby’s brain activity can be changed through these associations, shedding new light on the possibility of rehabilitating babies with injured brains and promoting the development of life-long skills such as speech, language and movement. Published recently in Cerebral Cortex, the researcher builds on the fact that learning associations is a very important part of babies’ development but the activity inside the brain that was responsible for learning these associations was unknown and unstudied. Lead researcher, Dr Tomoki Arichi said it is the first time it has been shown that babies’ brain activity can be altered through associative learning – and in particular, brain responses become associated with particular stimuli, in this case, sound. “We also found that when a baby is learning, it actually is activating lots of different parts of the brain, so it is starting to incorporate the ‘wider network’ inside the brain which is important for processing activity,” he said. A total of 24 infants were studied by playing them a sound of a jingling bell for six seconds, coupled with a gentle movement induced by a custom-made 3D printed robot strapped to their right hand. During this time, the resulting brain activity was measured using functional MRI (fMRI). After 20 minutes of learning an association between the two types of stimuli, the babies then just heard the sound on its own and the resulting brain activity was compared to that seen before the period of learning. Dr Arichi said not only do the results provide new information about what is happening inside the normal baby brain when it is learning, but also have implications for the injured brain. If a baby was not capable of processing movement, or movement is not associated with normal activity inside the brain (such might be the case in a baby with cerebral palsy), clinicians could then be able to induce that activity by learning an association with sound, and using the sound simulation to try and amplify and rehabilitate their movement. “With our findings it raises the possibility of trying to do something to help with that through targeted stimulation and learning associations,” Dr Arichi said. “It is possible to induce activity inside the part of the brain that normally processes movement, for instance, just by using a single sound. This could be used in conjunction with rehabilitation or to try and help guide brain development early in life.” When babies are born, they have a new sensory experience around them that is completely different to what they would have been experiencing inside the womb. They must then start to quickly understand their environment and the relationships between different things happening, which is even more important in babies that have injuries to their brain. The researchers sought to understand how babies start to learn these key relationships between different kinds of sensory experiences and how this then contributes to the early stages of overall brain development. “A baby’s brain is constantly learning associations and changing its activity all the time so that it can respond to the new experiences that are around it,” Dr Arichi said. “In terms of influencing patients and interpreting it in a wider context, what it means is that we should be thinking about how we could help with disorders of brain development from a very early stage in life because we know that experience is constantly shaping the newborn brain’s activity.” To read the original article click here.

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What Parents Should Know About Newborn Hearing Screenings

Newfound Ability to Change Baby Brain Activity Could Lead to Rehabilitation for Injured Brains