Encore: Concussions don't necessarily hurt your ears, but they can hurt your hearing

Encore: Concussions² don't necessarily hurt your ears, but they can hurt your hearing

Transcript³

People who sustain a concussion¹ can develop an unusual hearing problem. Their ears work fine, but their brain struggles to process sounds. (Story first aired on All Things Considered on Nov. 3, 2021.)

HEALTH

Concussions don't necessarily affect ears — but they can affect the ability to hear

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

With an added effect of concussions. You know that that kind of head injury brings pain, nausea⁴, dizziness and confusion. It's something to take seriously. Researchers say it can also cause trouble with how someone responds to sound. Here's NPR's Jon Hamilton.

JON HAMILTON, BYLINE⁵: Tiny nerve cells in the inner ear allow us to detect sounds, but it takes a lot of brainpower to process the signals coming from those cells. Nina Kraus is a neuroscientist at Northwestern University.

NINA KRAUS: Making sense of sound is one of the hardest jobs that we ask our brain to do. So you can imagine that a concussion, getting hit in the head, really does disrupt sound-processing.

HAMILTON: Kraus' lab, called Brainvolts, is studying this problem in hundreds of elite⁶ college athletes, including football players. And she devotes an entire chapter to concussion in her book "Of Sound Mind: How Our Brain Constructs A Meaningful Sonic World." Kraus says athletes who sustain a concussion usually have normal hearing when it comes to detecting faint sounds, yet they often fail something called the speech-in-noise test.

KRAUS: You have the athlete listen to a sentence that is embedded⁷ in increasingly loud noise.

HAMILTON: A sentence like this.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Sugar is very sweet.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Sugar is very sweet.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Sugar is very sweet.

HAMILTON: Kraus says a concussion may also leave athletes hypersensitive to sounds. To learn more, her lab has been analyzing⁸ the electrical signals in areas of the brain that process auditory information.

KRAUS: You just need to put on a couple of scalp electrodes and stick some earbuds in a person's ear and play some sounds.

HAMILTON: That reveals which sound-processing areas in the brain have been affected⁹ by a head injury. But researchers are only beginning to understand the problem. Kraus says most athletes recover from a concussion in a week or two. For those with lingering symptoms, she's experimenting with something called rhythm therapy.

KRAUS: The athlete needs to listen to sounds and kind of move their whole body so that they can align¹⁰ their movement with what they're hearing.

HAMILTON: A lot like dancing. The idea is to strengthen the pathways that process sound.

The military is also studying the link between head injury and sound processing. Melissa Papesh is a research investigator¹¹ at the Veterans Affairs National Center for Rehabilitative¹² Auditory Research. She says that during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the VA began to see something odd in military personnel.

MELISSA PAPESH: We have, all of a sudden, this large influx¹³ of relatively¹⁴ young and middle-aged¹⁵ people. They're coming into our audiology clinics and saying, hey, I'm having problems hearing. We test their hearing, and their hearing essentially¹⁶ looks normal.

HAMILTON: Their ears are fine, but their brains can't process what they're hearing. Papesh says that like athletes with concussions, they have trouble separating speech from background noise. And she says they often have another symptom.

PAPESH: They have problems processing rapidly spoken speech. Even the rate that I'm speaking right now might be too rapid for some of these folks to actually process the information.

HAMILTON: The scientists knew that the blast wave from a roadside bomb could cause a concussion, so Papesh says they took a closer look at the patients who had trouble processing sounds.

PAPESH: And when we started looking into some of those cases, it definitely seemed like brain injury and, in particular, blast exposure was really the main thing that was linking those things together.

HAMILTON: Some veterans still have symptoms more than a decade after being exposed to a bomb blast, and Papesh says researchers are trying to figure out whether exposure to lots of smaller blast waves can also affect certain military personnel.

PAPESH: So these are folks who fire shoulder-mounted weapons, or they are folks who are using explosive munitions¹⁷ to try to break through doors.

HAMILTON: This sort of exposure is especially troubling because it can occur during training, as well as in combat.

Jon Hamilton, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

1 concussion   

n.脑震荡；震动

参考例句：

• He was carried off the field with slight concussion.他因轻微脑震荡给抬离了现场。
• She suffers from brain concussion.她得了脑震荡。

2 concussions   

n.震荡( concussion的名词复数 )；脑震荡；冲击；震动

参考例句：

• People who have concussions often trouble thinking or remembering. 患脑震荡的人通常存在思考和记忆障碍。 来自互联网
• Concussions also make a person feel very tired or angry. 脑震荡也会使人感觉疲倦或愤怒。 来自互联网

3 transcript   

n.抄本，誊本，副本，肄业证书

参考例句：

• A transcript of the tapes was presented as evidence in court.一份录音带的文字本作为证据被呈交法庭。
• They wouldn't let me have a transcript of the interview.他们拒绝给我一份采访的文字整理稿。

4 nausea   

n.作呕，恶心；极端的憎恶(或厌恶)

参考例句：

• Early pregnancy is often accompanied by nausea.怀孕期常有恶心的现象。
• He experienced nausea after eating octopus.吃了章鱼后他感到恶心。

5 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

6 elite   

n.精英阶层；实力集团；adj.杰出的，卓越的

参考例句：

• The power elite inside the government is controlling foreign policy.政府内部的一群握有实权的精英控制着对外政策。
• We have a political elite in this country.我们国家有一群政治精英。

7 embedded   

a.扎牢的

参考例句：

• an operation to remove glass that was embedded in his leg 取出扎入他腿部玻璃的手术
• He has embedded his name in the minds of millions of people. 他的名字铭刻在数百万人民心中。

8 analyzing   

v.分析；分析( analyze的现在分词 )；分解；解释；对…进行心理分析n.分析

参考例句：

• Analyzing the date of some socialist countries presents even greater problem s. 分析某些社会主义国家的统计数据，暴露出的问题甚至更大。 来自辞典例句
• He undoubtedly was not far off the mark in analyzing its predictions. 当然，他对其预测所作的分析倒也八九不离十。 来自辞典例句

9 affected   

adj.不自然的，假装的

参考例句：

• She showed an affected interest in our subject.她假装对我们的课题感到兴趣。
• His manners are affected.他的态度不自然。

10 align   

vt.使成一线，结盟，调节；vi.成一线，结盟

参考例句：

• Align the ruler and the middle of the paper.使尺子与纸张的中部成一条直线。
• There are signs that the prime minister is aligning himself with the liberals.有迹象表明首相正在与自由党人结盟。

11 investigator   

n.研究者，调查者，审查者

参考例句：

• He was a special investigator for the FBI.他是联邦调查局的特别调查员。
• The investigator was able to deduce the crime and find the criminal.调查者能够推出犯罪过程并锁定罪犯。

12 rehabilitative   

使复原的，复职的

参考例句：

• Objective To desacribe self concept and sub concept of rehabilitative schizophrenic patients. 目的探讨恢复期精神分裂症病人的自我概念。
• Objective To desacribe self concept and concept of rehabilitative schizophrenic patients. 目的探讨大学生自我概念与心理健康之间的关系。

13 influx   

n.流入，注入

参考例句：

• The country simply cannot absorb this influx of refugees.这个国家实在不能接纳这么多涌入的难民。
• Textile workers favoured protection because they feared an influx of cheap cloth.纺织工人拥护贸易保护措施，因为他们担心涌入廉价纺织品。

14 relatively   

adv.比较...地，相对地

参考例句：

• The rabbit is a relatively recent introduction in Australia.兔子是相对较新引入澳大利亚的物种。
• The operation was relatively painless.手术相对来说不痛。

15 middle-aged   

adj.中年的

参考例句：

• I noticed two middle-aged passengers.我注意到两个中年乘客。
• The new skin balm was welcome by middle-aged women.这种新护肤香膏受到了中年妇女的欢迎。

16 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

17 munitions   

n.军火，弹药；v.供应…军需品

参考例句：

• The army used precision-guided munitions to blow up enemy targets.军队用精确瞄准的枪炮炸掉敌方目标。
• He rose [made a career for himself] by dealing in munitions.他是靠贩卖军火发迹的。