Sudden Arrhythmia Death Syndrome is a disorder of the electrical system of the heart that can lead to the death of apparently healthy people without any warning according to the http://www.sads.org.uk/

Is it possible that loud bass music could bring on such a condition? Herewith a recent article:

Student who complained of loud bass music ‘getting to his heart’ dropped dead at freshers’ party day after enrolling at university

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 5:50 PM on 08th December 2009

 Tom Reid, 19, is believed to have suffered from a heart disorder that affects young people

A brilliant student collapsed and died at a freshers’ party after complaining that the loud bass music was ‘getting to his heart’, an inquest heard.

Apparently healthy Tom Reid, 19, had only enrolled at university the day before he suddenly dropped dead in a crowded London club with a heart condition.

Today, his parents told of their anguish at the death of the ‘amazing’ linguistics student, from Leeds, which came just hours after they had shared a meal with him.

A coroner recorded a verdict of natural causes and said the award-winning public speaker had suffered from Sudden Arrythmic Death Syndrome (SADS), a disorder of the electrical system of the heart that affects young people.

Halina and Anthony Reid had driven to University College London with Tom’s belongings on Sunday, September 27 and the family shared a farewell lunch.

During the meal, Tom had made a passing comment about occasionally suffering heart palpations in response to his mother saying she had experienced irregular heartbeats, St Pancras Coroners Court heard.

Mr Reid, a sales engineer, said: ‘Basically he said “Mum, mine sometimes does that.”

‘It was a remark. It wasn’t a complaint.’

That night he went out with a friend to Koko in Camden, North London, and after complaining of a ‘fast and irregular’ heartbeat he was pronounced dead at University College Hospital in the early hours of the next morning.

Tom’s friend Alisha Riseley said on the night of his death they went to the club and as it filled up they had been pushed towards the speakers.

She said: ‘Tom said he felt like the bass was getting to his heart and we went to stand at the back.’ 

‘My heart feels funny, I think the bass is affecting me. Oh God, I feel very weird. My heart is beating so fast’

He told her: ‘My heart feels funny, I think the bass is affecting me. Oh God, I feel very weird. My heart is beating so fast.’

After falling ill at about 1.30am, the pair went to see a medic at the club shortly after 2am.

Miss Riseley told the court the medic had ‘preferred’ Tom to go to hospital but said he could also go home and hope he felt better.

The student had intially been keen not to ‘make a fuss’, but while he was still weighing up his options he suddenly collapsed in a side room at the club.

Ms Riseley said: ‘He suddenly leant to the side and keeled over as though he fainted.’

The medic started CPR and then paramedics tried to shock his heart into action six or seven times but his pulse only returned for 30 seconds each time, the inquest heard.

Tom was rushed to hospital and despite further treatment he was pronounced dead at 3.11am, less than two hours after first complaining of feeling unwell.

Toxicology tests showed no drugs or alcohol in his blood, while a friend said he had only bought two drinks during the night.

In a statement, Mr Reid and his wife said: ‘As parents we are totally devastated over the enormous loss of our beloved son - it has created a void which can never, ever be filled.

‘Tom was an amazing individual. He loved life and he loved his family and friends.

‘Academically brilliant, he achieved a highly prestigious place at UCL, studying linguistics.

‘He achieved the very highest grades at A level and simultaneously, he was awarded a national award for public speaking - the Voice Of The Future.

‘Voted “personality of the year” at his leavers prom, he was adored by all. He had a brilliant life ahead of him. We were, and we remain, tremendously proud of our precious son.

‘His death nearly destroyed us too. Every child is precious - Tom was our world.’

The statement added: ”What a sad indictment of our society that it was automatically assumed that Tom’s death was alcohol related just because he was in a club with friends having fun.’

The family said they were ‘horrified’ to learn that SADS claimed the lives the at least 12 apparently fit and healthy young people each week.

They added that they had been working with the charity, Cardiac Risk In The Young (CRY) which works with people affected by SADS.

Pathologist Dr Sian Hughes told the court Tom’s heart was ’structurally normal’ and showed no signs of coronary disease. She thought he had died of an ‘undetectable condition in his heart’.

She said SADS, a new condition that is still being probed by cardiologists, was the most likely cause of the sudden death.

The court heard the condition can be genetic and the family were warned to have regular check-ups.

Coroner Dr Andrew Reid said: ‘I hope some lessons may be learnt from his tragic death, although those lessons may be of limited consolation to his bereaved parents and relatives.

‘The nature and circumstances of his death has implications for his first degree relatives. It may be something that some or all of them need to keep in their minds.’

He added that cardiologists were observing ‘more and more’ new irregular heart rhythms that come under the SADS umbrella.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1234191/Student-complained-loud-bass-music-getting-heart-dropped-dead-freshers-party-day-enrolling-university.html#ixzz0eeUumhzd

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So some of the patients go there cause they hear things, while others, cause they don’t!

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Three old guys are out walking. First one says, “Windy, isn’t it?”
Second one says, “No, its Thursday!”
Third one says, “So am I. Let’s go get a beer.”

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A man was telling his neighbor, “I just bought a new hearing aid. It cost me four thousand dollars, but it’s state of the art. It’s perfect.”
“Really,” answered the neighbor. “What kind is it?”
“Twelve thirty.”

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Herewith the Article:

Power steering for your hearing

Study: Ears have tiny ‘flexoelectric’ motors to amplify sound

		IMAGE: Richard Rabbitt, professor and chair of bioengineering at the University of Utah, led a study indicating that a mechanism known as “flexoelectricity ” works within the cochlea of the ear to… Click here for more information.

SALT LAKE CITY – Utah and Texas researchers have learned how quiet sounds are magnified by bundles of tiny, hair-like tubes atop “hair cells” in the ear: when the tubes dance back and forth, they act as “flexoelectric motors” that amplify sound mechanically.

“We are reporting discovery of a new nanoscale motor in the ear,” says Richard Rabbitt, the study’s principal author and a professor and chair of bioengineering at the University of Utah College of Engineering. “The ear has a mechanical amplifier in it that uses electrical power to do mechanical amplification.”

“It’s like a car’s power steering system,” he adds. “You turn the wheel and mechanical power is added. Here, the incoming sound is like your hand turning the wheel, but to drive, you need to add power to it. These hair bundles add power to the sound. If you did not have this mechanism, you would need a powerful hearing aid.”

The new study is scheduled for publication Wednesday, April 22 in PLoS ONE, a journal published by the Public Library of Science. The first author is Katie Breneman, a bioengineering doctoral student at the University of Utah. The study was coauthored by William Brownell, a professor of otolaryngology (ear, nose and throat medicine) at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

The researchers speculate flexoelectrical conversion of electricity into mechanical work also might be involved in processes such as memory formation and food digestion.

Dancing Cells and Hair-like Tubes in Your Ears

Previous research elsewhere indicated that hair cells within the cochlea of the inner ear can “dance” – elongate and contract – to help amplify sounds.

The new study shows sounds also may be amplified by the back-and-forth flexing or “dancing” of “stereocilia,” which are the 50 to 300 hair-like nanotubes projecting from the top of each hair cell.

Such flexing converts an electric signal generated by incoming sound into mechanical work – namely, more flexing of the stereocilia – thereby amplifying the sound by what is known as a flexoelectric effect.

“Dancing hairs help you hear,” says Breneman. The study “suggests sensory cells in the ear are compelled to move when they hear sounds, just like a music aficionado might dance at a concert. In this case, however, they’ll dance in response to sounds as miniscule as the sound of your own blood flow pulsating in your ear.”

In a yet-unpublished upcoming study, Rabbitt, Breneman and Brownell find evidence the hair cells themselves – like the stereocilia bundles atop those cells – also amplify sound by getting longer and shorter due to flexoelectricity.

		IMAGE: University of Utah bioengineering doctoral student Katie Breneman and a large laboratory model of the cochlea, the part of the inner ear where incoming sound vibrations are converted into nerve… Click here for more information.

Rabbitt and Brownell estimate the combined flexoelectric amplification – by both hair cells and the hair-like stereocilia atop hair cells – makes it possible for humans to hear the quietest 35 to 40 decibels of their range of hearing. Rabbitt says the flexoelectric amplifiers are needed to hear sounds quieter than the level of comfortable conversation.

“The beauty of the amplifier is that it allows you to hear very quiet sounds,” Brownell says. Rabbit says that because hair cells die as people age, older people often “need a hearing aid because amplification by the hair cells is not working.”

Because hair-like stereocilia also are involved in our sense of balance, the flexing of stereocilia not only contributes to hearing, but “also likely is involved in our sense of gravity, motion and orientation – all the things needed to have balance,” Rabbitt says.

The new study is part of an effort by researchers to understand the amazing sensitivity of human hearing. Rabbitt says the hair cells are so sensitive they can detect sounds almost as small as those caused by Brownian motion, which is the irregular movement of particles suspended in gas or liquid and bombarded by molecules or atoms.

An Amplifier for All Sorts of Ears

Hair cells are inside the inner ears of many animals. They are within the ear’s cochlea, which is the spiral, snail-shell-shaped cavity where incoming sound vibrations are converted into nerve impulses and sent to the brain. Incoming sounds must be amplified because incoming sound waves are “damped” by fluid that fills the inner ear.

Hair cells are about 10 microns wide, and 30 to 100 microns long. By comparison, a human hair is roughly 100 microns wide. A micron is one-millionth of a meter. The hair-like stereocilia tubes poking out the top of a hair cell are each a mere 1 to 10 microns long and about 200 nanometers wide, or 200 billionths of a meter wide.

Brownell says the new study shows how the flexoelectric effect “can account for the amplification of sound in the cochlea.”

Stereocilia essentially are membranes that have been rolled into tiny tubes, so “the fact that a membrane can generate acoustic [mechanical] energy is novel,” says Brownell. “Imagine hearing a soap bubble talk.”

Flexoelectricity in a membrane was noted a few decades ago when a researcher in Europe showed that flexing or bending a simple membrane in a laboratory generated an electrical field. Then, in 1983, Brownell showed that a hair cell from a guinea pig’s ear changed in length when an electric field was applied to it in a lab dish.

		IMAGE: The illustration shows a cross-section of part of the cochlea, the fluid-filled part of the inner ear that converts vibrations from incoming sounds into nerve signals that travel to the… Click here for more information.

The length of stereocilia changes along the coiled length of the cochlea. Different lengths are sensitive to different frequencies of sound. And different animals have different ranges of stereocilia lengths.

Breneman and colleagues devised math formulas and used computer simulations to arrive at the new study’s key finding: The flexoelectric amplifier can explain why varying lengths of stereocilia predict which sound frequencies are heard most easily by a variety of animals, from humans to bats, mice, turtles, chickens and lizards.

“They found that a longer stereocilium was more efficient if it was receiving low-frequency sounds,” while shorter stereocilia most efficiently amplified high-frequency sound, Brownell says.

Breneman says scientists now know of five ways the ears amplify sound, and “what makes this one unique is that it would be present in the stereocilia bundles of all hair cells, not only outer hair cells.”

The cochleae of humans and other mammals have “inner hair cells” that sense sound passively and active “outer hair cells” that amplify sounds. Other higher animals have hair cells, without a distinction between inner and outer.

Because the new study shows the dancing hair-like stereocilia act like an amplifier on any hair cell, “it explains how this amplifier may work in all higher animals like birds and reptiles, not just humans,” Rabbitt says.

How the Amplifier Works in the Inner Ear – and Perhaps Elsewhere

When sound enters the cochlea and reaches the hair cells, sound pressure makes the hair-like stereocilia tubes “pivot left or right similar to the way a signpost bends in heavy wind,” Breneman says.

The tops of the tubes are connected to each other by protein filaments. Where each filament comes in contact with the top end of a stereocilium tube, there is an “ion channel” that opens and closes as the bundle of stereocilia sway back and forth.

When the channel opens, electrically charged calcium and potassium ions flow into the tubes. That changes the electric voltage across the membrane encasing each stereocilium, making the tubes flex and dance even more.

Such flexoelectricity amplifies the sound and ultimately releases neurotransmitter chemicals from the bottom of the hair cells, sending the sound’s nerve signal to the brain, Breneman says.

“We’ve got these nanotubes – stereocilia – moving left and right and converting electrical power [from ions] into mechanical amplification of sound-induced vibrations in the ear,” Rabbitt says. He says the “flexoelectric motor” is the collective movement of the stereocilia in response to sound.

Brownell says the new study – showing that sound is amplified by “dancing” membrane tubes atop hair cells – adds to growing evidence that membranes do not “just sit there,” but instead are “dynamic structures capable of doing work using a mechanism called flexoelectricity.”

Brownell and Rabbitt note that stereocilia involved in amplifying hearing have similarities with other tube-like structures in the human body, such as villi in the gut, dendritic spines on the signal-receiving ends of nerve cells and growth cones on the signal-transmitting axon ends of growing nerve cells.

So they speculate flexoelectricity may play a role in how villi in the intestines help absorb food and how nerves grow and repair themselves.

“There is some evidence that dendrites and axons change their diameter during intracellular voltage changes, and that could well have flexoelectric origins,” says Rabbitt. “Any time you have a membrane with small diameter – like in axons, dendrites and synaptic vesicles [located between nerve cells], there will be large flexoelectric forces and effects. Therefore, the flexoelectric effect may be at work in things like learning and memory. But that’s pretty speculative.”

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-04/uou-psf041609.php

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This time round the BBC reported on a boy from Dorset whom has learned to use echoes to picture the world around him - similar to sonar techniques used by bats and dolphins. He clicks his tongue on the roof of his mouth and from the sound that returns he tries to work out the distance, shape, density and position of objects. The echolocation technique has helped Lucas, who was born blind, play basketball and rock climb.

He was taught the system by blind Californian Daniel Kish, 43, who founded the World Access for the Blind charity. Lucas’s parents Sarah and Iain saw Mr Kish on TV and asked him to visit. Mr Kish said: “Lucas is one of the first in the UK to use this technique. “He is able to click his tongue and determine where things are around him and what things are around him and he is able to travel comfortably without holding on to people. “The click basically emanates a sound which bounces off the environment a bit like the flash of a camera.”

Lucas tells distance by timing how long the echo takes to return and he works out the object’s location by which ear the sound reaches first. He picks up the density and shape of it by the intensity of the sound bouncing back. An object moving away creates a lower pitch and one moving closer a higher pitch. Mr Kish said Lucas determines the qualities of an object by the characteristics of the sound that comes back. “He does play basketball, he is able to make it in to the hoop by clicking, he is actually pretty good at that,” Mr Kish added. “He is doing very well and his mobility is amazing, the best for his age in the UK.”

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/dorset/8291573.stm

A couple of videos on how Daniel Kish implements echolocation (including mountain biking!!):

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Interviewing Mr Hendricks, I was surprised at how well he lip-reads, but more so, how well he speaks, enunciating high frequency speech sounds with ease and having near normal intonation. I learnt he is a tax accountant and his idiopathic hearing loss developed from the age of five stabilising at the end of his teens. Even though he functions at such a high level (giving his degree of hearing loss), he currently finds conference calls with foreign clients very difficult and his hearing loss is having an increasing negative impact both professionally and personally.

We discussed cochlear implants and apparently thought the invasive procedure of “destroying the cochlea” sounded too aggressive when he investigated it a good few years ago. He therefore never pursued the idea. My own knowledge of cochlear implants are somewhat rusted but I told him the basics as well as the fact that research indicates the enormous success of it. I stumbled upon this short youtube video which I found quite useful to explain the basics.

I have referred him for a full assessment and only time will tell about his candidacy and whether he indeed will decide to proceed with surgery. Personally I do hope he has the implant as I believe it will prove life changing to him in the end!

Dezi Belle

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