Search

Objectives Pain and its control is a significant health problem worldwide. The present study aimed to determine the effects of white noise (bird sound) on the severity of muscle vaccination pain in children under two years old. Materials & Methods This study was a case-control study conducted in 2021. The samples included seventy children under two years old referred to the health centers in Ramsar City, Iran. The samples were selected using the convenient sampling method and divided into experimental and control groups. The data were collected using the demographic characteristics questionnaire, facial expression, and pain assessment in pediatric patients (FLACC). They were then analyzed by SPSS16 using an independent t-test and analysis of covariance (P<0.05). Results A significant difference was observed between the severity of muscle vaccination pain in children in the two groups (p=0.042); the pain intensity mean in the experimental group (6.45±2.01) was lower than the control group (8.94±1.28). Conclusion This method can be a harmless and inexpensive intervention to reduce pain intensity and behavioral pain responses in infants during painful procedures, especially vaccination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Noise and solvents are two occupational exposures with possible hearing effects. We aimed to assess the effect of exposure to noise and organic solvents on acoustic reflex. This cross-sectional study was conducted on three groups: 80 workers exposed to impermissible amounts of organic solvents (mainly styrene), 78 workers exposed to loud noise and 67 subjects as a control group. The hearing status of the subjects was assessed by pure tone audiometry and acoustic reflex. Data were analysed by SPSS (ver. 20) (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL) using Student's t-test, chi-square test and ANOVA. The mean hearing threshold at high frequencies was significantly higher in the noise group, followed by the solvent group, compared to the control group (p<.0001). Mean acoustic reflex was higher in the solvent group, followed by the noise group (p<.05). The frequency of absent acoustic reflex was also significantly higher in noise and solvent groups than in controls (p<.05). This study suggests that exposure to organic solvents alone without simultaneous noise, despite a normal hearing threshold, can affect acoustic reflex, so conducting preventive hearing tests such as acoustic reflex test, in workers exposed to organic solvents, may be one of the effective ways to prevent occupational hearing loss in these workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background & aim: Hospitalization in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) is associated with side effects such as anxiety, pain and fear of an unknown environment and causes hemodynamic instabilities (increased blood pressure, pulse and breathing rates, etc.) These hemodynamic instabilities lead to the use of sensory stimulation programs which can be prevented, however knowing and using the best sensory stimulation program is of particular importance. The current study was carried out with aim of comparing the effect of auditory stimulation and tactile on the physiologic parameters in patients with Level of Consciousness hospitalized in the ICU in Ali-Ebne-Abitaleb Hospital in Zahedan in 2021. Methods: In this single-blind semi experimental study, at first 80 patients in the ICU in Ali-Ebne-Abitaleb Hospital who met the inclusion criteria were selected and then randomly allocated by permutation block into two groups of auditory stimulation and tactile. In the auditory stimulation group, a prepared auditory file was used for 15 minutes for three days. In the tactile group, touching the hands patients was done for 15 minutes for three days. Physiologic parameters such as heart rate, respiratory rate, systolic and diastolic pressure, mean arterial pressure and O2 saturation was measured and recorded 5 minutes before and after the intervention by Cardio Set LX110 monitoring. Results: Findings revealed that the mean of systolic pressure and O2 saturation was not significantly different after the intervention between the two groups (P>0.05). However, in terms of the variables such as heart rate, respiratory rate, diastolic and mean artery pressure, the independent- T- test showed a significant difference after the intervention between the two groups (P <0.05). Conclusion: The application of the two stimulation methos can adjust some physiologic parameters in patients in ICUs. Furthermore, these methods can be used as simple, cost-effective and applicable methods for managing pain and recovering the physiologic parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Aim: Amblyaudia is a diagnostic issue in central auditory processing disorder (CAPD), which is characterized by asymmetry in dichotic listening performance. This disorder negatively affects the academic performance of children by influencing their information processing, reading, attention, etc. The present study aimed to investigate the effect of the dichotic interaural intensity difference (DIID) training on all auditory processing categories of the Buffalo Model using the Persian staggered spondaic word (P-SSW) test. Methods: The study was conducted on 17 children (11 girls and 6 boys) aged 8-12 years old diagnosed with amblyaudia. All children were first evaluated by the P-SSW test, and then participated in 10-12 sessions of the DIID training. The P-SSW test was taken again after completing the training program in order to evaluate the training effect. Results: The paired t-test results showed a significant reduction in the mean scores of decoding (p < 0.001) and tolerance fading memory (p < 0.004) categories as well as the total mean score of P-SSW test after training. The Wilcoxon test also showed the effect of this training on the integration category (p < 0.025). The McNemar test, however, showed no statistically significant effect of the DIID training on the organization category. Conclusion: The DIID training causes significant improvement in some central auditory processing categories of the Buffalo Model, including decoding, tolerance fading memory and integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives Considering the common neurological origins, there is a relationship between the sensory gating and cognitive functions. However, there is no adequate information on this issue. In this study, auditory event-related potentials and the sensory gating performance were assessed in P50, N100 and P200 waves. Besides, their relationship with cognitive performance in auditory and visual modalities was investigated. Materials & Methods Nineteen normal primary school students (14 boys) were tested in Tehran, Iran from 2017 to 2018. In the auditory modality, the Persian version of the non-word repetition test and monaural selective auditory attention test (mSAAT) were used for assessment of the working memory and selective attention, respectively. In order to evaluate the visual working memory and visual selective attention, Rey-Osterrieth complex figure, selective and divided attention test were used, respectively. A 32-channel EEG system was used for electrophysiological assessment. Results The P50 sensory gating was negatively correlated with the visual selective attention (P=0.034, r=-0.49) and N100 sensory gating was negatively correlated with the auditory working memory (P=0.043, r=-0.48) as well as visual selective attention (P=0.039, r=-0.47). For P200, there was a significant negative relationship with auditory selective attention in the right ear (P=0.034, r=-0.49). Conclusion Sensory gating in children is not a modality-specific phenomenon. Sensory gating in a modality could be associated with cognitive functions in other modalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective Cochlear microphonic (CM) is a cochlear AC electric field, recorded within, around, and remote from its sources. Nowadays it can contribute to the differential diagnosis of different auditory pathologies such as auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder (ANSD). This study compared CM waveforms (CMWs) and amplitudes with broad and narrow band stimuli in 25 healthy male young adults Wistar rats. Materials & Methods This experimental study was accomplished in the School of Rehabilitation Sciences of Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran (April, 2016). Using an extratympanic technique in ECochG (Electrocochleography) recording, CMWs in response to click and tonal stimuli with different octave frequencies were recorded at a high intensity level in subjects. The CMW amplitudes were calculated by a graphical user interface (GUI) designed in MATLAB. Results The CMW magnitude increased upon an increase in bandwidth stimulation. CM amplitude with click stimulation was larger than tonal stimuli. Across tonal stimuli, the CMW amplitudes at lower frequency tones were larger than those at higher frequency tones. Those findings were statistically significant (P<0.001). Conclusion CMW amplitude with click as broadband stimulus was larger than those with tone bursts as narrowband stimulation. Click stimulation due to the width of spectral involves greater regions of cochlear partition. Therefore, CMW most likely is a reflection of spatial summation of voltage drops generated by hair cell groups in response to acoustic stimulation. In order to production nature of CM potentials as well as their very small magnitudes especially with tonal stimuli, thus, we recommend using click stimulation for CM potential recording. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hospitalized neonates usually undergo different painful procedures. This study sought to test the effects of a familiar auditory stimulus on the physiologic responses to pain of venipuncture among neonates in intensive care unit. The study design is quasi-experimental. The randomized clinical trial study was done on 60 full-term neonates admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit between March 20 to June 20, 2014. The neonates were conveniently selected and randomly allocated to the control and the experimental groups. Recorded maternal voice was played for the neonates in the experimental group from 10 minutes before to 10 minutes after venipuncture while the neonates in the control group received no sound therapy intervention. The participants' physiologic parameters were assessed 10 minutes before, during, and after venipuncture. At baseline, the study groups did not differ significantly regarding the intended physiologic parameters ( P > .05). During venipuncture, maternal voice was effective in reducing the neonates' heart rate, respiratory rate, and diastolic blood pressure ( P < .05). Maternal voice is effective in reducing some physiologic parameters during and after performing the painful procedure of venipuncture. Nurses are recommended to use familiar sounds to effectively manage neonates' physiologic responses to procedural pain of venipuncture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study was designed to determine the effect of Quran listening without its musical tone (Tartil) on the mental health of personnel in Zahedan University of Medical Sciences, southeast of Iran. The results showed significant differences between the test and control groups in their mean mental health scores after Quran listening ( P = 0.037). No significant gender differences in the test group before and after intervention were found ( P = 0.806). These results suggest that Quran listening could be recommended by psychologists for improving mental health and achieving greater calm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Residual inhibition (RI) is a temporary phenomenon that happens following offset of appropriate complete or partial acoustical and electrical masking stimulations in people who experience tinnitus. The biologic mechanisms associated with RI are not yet fully understood. Few studies have been focused on RI. Auditory mismatch negativity (MMN) as a change-detection tool may be an appropriate tool to explore the processing changes because of tinnitus and RI. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate alterations in auditory change detection and auditory sensory memory related to RI induced by auditory electrical stimulation (AES) using MMN brain mapping in participants with tinnitus. Research Design: This investigation was a single-blind randomized controlled clinical trial study. Participants were randomly assigned into two groups: AES and placebo electrical stimulation (PES). Study Sample: Twenty-eight participants with chronic subjective tinnitus aged 22- to 45-yr-old participated in the study. Intervention: After randomization, all participants received both AES and PES for 1 min in different sessions. Data Collection and Analysis: Brain mapping of multifeature MMN paradigm was recorded from 29 scalp electrodes pre- and post-AES and PES. Following AES, participants were categorized into two groups: RI and nonresidual inhibition (NRI). The grand average MMN waveforms and isopotential topographic maps were obtained in RI, NRI, and PES groups. Results: Three MMN parameters for five deviants of frequency, intensity, duration, location, and silent gap were compared among three groups of RI, NRI, and PES. Statistical analyses revealed significant between-subject effects for AES on MMN amplitude of frequency and duration deviant, MMN area under the curve of frequency, intensity, and duration deviants. Conclusions: Presence of RI can reestablish change-detection mechanisms in the central auditory pathways. It is suggested that MMN is reliable for assessment of change-detection system in people with tinnitus. It can be a useful technique in monitoring effects of treatments and rehabilitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Sensory deprivation is one of the common complications of coma patients in the intensive care unit (ICU). The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of a familiar voice to consciousness level in coma patients. Methods: A total of 13 patients with traumatic coma (8 ⩾ Glasgow's coma scale [GCS]) admitted in ICU ward were randomly assigned to control and experimental groups. The experimental group was treated twice a daily each time 15 min with a familiar recorded MP3 sound for 2 weeks. The control group received only natural voices of environment. GCS applied to evaluate patients' level of consciousness. Finding: Findings showed that duration to reach GCS = 15 was significantly shorter in the experimental group (χ2= 12/96, P < 0/001). Conclusion: These findings imply that providing familiar auditory stimulation programs for coma patients in the ICU could be effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning is one of the most common types of fatal poisonings worldwide. Acute exposure to high levels of CO as well as chronic exposure to low levels of CO and excessive noise can lead to high frequency hearing loss. In this study, twelve guinea pigs were randomly divided into two groups: (1) exposed to noise and (2) exposed to noise plus CO. Auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) were measured prior to the experiment and immediately, 5, 10 and 15 days post exposures. There was a significant difference between the ABR thresholds before and immediately after exposure to noise at frequencies of 4, 8, and 16 kHz and the most threshold shift was observed at 8 kHz. There was also a significant difference between the ABR thresholds before and immediately after exposure to noise and CO at frequencies of 2, 4, 8, and 16 kHz which demonstrated a temporary hearing loss after exposure to noise and CO and the major impact of CO on developing noise induced hearing loss occurred at 8 kHz. No significant difference was observed between the ABR thresholds recorded before conducting the experiments and the ones obtained 5, 10 and 15 days after simultaneous exposure to noise and CO at none of frequencies. Simultaneous exposure to noise and CO contributes to transient hearing loss in guinea pigs with the most evident temporary shift at 8 kHz. The methods were accepted in the Ethics Committee of Iran University of Medical Science (registration No. CTRI/2016/01/017170) on January 18, 2016., Competing Interests: None

Background and Objectives: Emotion perception plays a major role in proper communication with people in different social interactions. Nonverbal affect bursts can be used to evaluate vocal emotion perception. The present study was a preliminary step to establishing the psychometric properties of the Persian version of the Montreal Affective Voices (MAV) test, as well as to investigate the effect of Parkinson disease (PD) on vocal emotion perception., Methods: The short, emotional sound made by pronouncing the vowel "a" in Persian was recorded by 22 actors and actresses to develop the Persian version of the MAV, the Persian Affective Voices (PAV), for emotions of happiness, sadness, pleasure, pain, anger, disgust, fear, surprise, and neutrality. The results of the recordings of five of the actresses and five of the actors who obtained the highest score were used to generate the test. For convergent validity assessment, the correlation between the PAV and a speech prosody comprehension test was examined using a gender- and age-matched control group. To investigate the effect of the PD on emotion perception, the PAV test was performed on 28 patients with mild PD between ages 50 and 70 years., Results: The PAV showed a high internal consistency (Cronbach's α = 0.80). A significant positive correlation was observed between the PAV and the speech prosody comprehension test. The test-retest reliability also showed the high repeatability of the PAV (intraclass correlation coefficient = 0.815, P ≤ 0.001). A significant difference was observed between the patients with PD and the controls in all subtests., Conclusion: The PAV test is a useful psychometric tool for examining vocal emotion perception that can be used in both behavioral and neuroimaging studies., (Copyright © 2018 The Voice Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Background: Regarding the strong auditory spatial plasticity capability of the central auditory system and the effect of short-term and long-term rehabilitation programs in elderly people, it seems that an auditory spatial training can help this population in informational masking release and better track speech in noisy environments. The main purposes of this study are developing an informational masking measurement test and an auditory spatial training program. Protocol: This study will be conducted in two parts. Part 1: develop and determine the validity of an informational masking measurement test by recruiting two groups of young (n=50) and old (n=50) participants with normal hearing who have no difficulty in understanding speech in noisy environments. Part 2 (clinical trial): two groups of 60-75-year-olds with normal hearing, who complain about difficulty in speech perception in noisy environments, will participate as control and intervention groups to examine the effect of auditory spatial training. Intervention: 15 sessions of auditory spatial training. The informational masking measurement test and Speech, Spatial and Qualities of Hearing Scale will be compared before intervention, immediately after intervention, and five weeks after intervention between the two groups. Discussion: Since auditory training programs do not deal with informational masking release, an auditory spatial training will be designed, aiming to improve hearing in noisy environments for elderly populations. Trial registration: Iranian Registry of Clinical Trials ( IRCT20190118042404N1) on 25 th February 2019., Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed.

Our native tongue influences the way we perceive other languages. But does it also determine the way we perceive nonlinguistic sounds? The authors investigated how speakers of Italian, Turkish, and Persian group sequences of syllables, tones, or visual shapes alternating in either frequency or duration. We found strong native listening effects with linguistic stimuli. Speakers of Italian grouped the linguistic stimuli differently from speakers of Turkish and Persian. However, speakers of all languages showed the same perceptual biases when grouping the nonlinguistic auditory and the visual stimuli. The shared perceptual biases appear to be determined by universal grouping principles, and the linguistic differences caused by prosodic differences between the languages. Although previous findings suggest that acquired linguistic knowledge can either enhance or diminish the perception of both linguistic and nonlinguistic auditory stimuli, we found no transfer of native listening effects across auditory domains or perceptual modalities. (PsycINFO Database Record, ((c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).)

Hyperbilirubinemia at neonatal period is one of the major deteriorating factors of the auditory system. If left untreated, it may cause certain cerebral damage. This study aims to evaluate the impact of hyperbilirubinemia on the hearing of neonate. This study was conducted on 35 newborn babies with jaundice (bilirubin more than 20 mg/dL). Auditory brainstem response (ABR) and transient evoked otoacoustic emission (TEOAE) tests were performed, after treatment and one year after. ABR test results indicated that 26 children (74.3%) had normal hearing but 9 (25.7%) suffered from an impairment. As for TEOAE test, 30 children (85.7%) passed whereas the remaining (14.3%) seemed to be failures. The comparative results of the two tests pointed to autonomic neuropathy /autonomic dysreflexia symptoms in 5 babies. Due to the high incidence of autonomic neuropathy/autonomic dysreflexia among hyperbilirubinemic babies, screening in this regard seems reasonable. Our result emphasizes the necessity of more experiments on the afflicted areas.

This paper describes five successive interventions in the rearing of infants at an orphanage in Tehran, with their outcomes. The outcomes were assessed longitudinally. The first of the successive groups, here called "waves", numbered 15. These Ss constitute the controls. The only intervention consisted of examining the infants every other week during the first year and every fourth week thereafter with the ordinal, sensorimotor scales of Uzgiris and Hunt. The audio-visual intervention intended for the second wave of 10 infants was tape-recorded mother talk and music under the control of the infants and mobiles that the infants could activate. This plan was never adequately implemented because of inadequate supervision. The third wave of 10 infants got extra untutored human care. The fourth wave of 20 infants got the kind of audio-visual intervention originally intended for the second wave plus access to responsive inanimate materials. For the fifth wave, numbering 11, the infant-caretaker ratio was reduced to two or three to one and the caretakers were taught the Badger program supplemented with procedures to foster vocal imitation and semantic mastery of body parts, clothing, toys, and other objects and events regularly encountered. The results show that each successive wave, excepting the second, achieved the top steps of nearly all seven of the ordinal scales at mean ages younger than the preceding wave, and the fifth wave surpassed even home-reared American children from predominantly professional families in achieving the top steps on five of the seven scales. The findings show that infants need not advance along all branches simultaneously and that the kinds of experience encountered determine the branch along which advancement occurs. A number of theoretical implications are examined. Especially important is the idea that a dependable educational psychology for infancy and early childhood calls for much more knowledge than we now have of the kinds of experience that advance development along each of the various branches.