When she completes her Fulbright stay, Amanda Oversen plans on applying for graduate school
Amanda Oversen’s interest in linguistics has a very clear inspiration: her mom.
Oversen, a Speech and Hearing Science major who graduated in December 2021, was recently awarded a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship to Spain. Her goal is to become a bilingual speech-language pathologist for elementary school-aged students.
That makes sense given her curiosity about languages, which she credits to her mother.
“My mom is from Honduras. She immigrated to the U.S. when she was 16. And interestingly enough, she moved to the U.S. because she wanted to learn English. She also has this curiosity about language, which I think kind of rubbed off on me,” Oversen said.
While in Spain, Oversen plans to learn Spanish Sign Language and connect with the local deaf community. She also is interested in how to cultivate cultural-linguistic diversity in the American school system.
“I think when we learn a different language, it opens up just so many doors,” she said. “You’re able to understand people on a different level. I find that really fascinating. I think a lot of that had to do with my mom growing up bilingual, too.”
Oversen, who is from Highland Park, Ill., served as a teaching assistant in the Child Development Laboratory in SHS, which amplified her desire to work with children.
“I loved how curious kids were, and how everything was new to them, how the tiniest thing—something that comes so commonly to adults—was mind-blowing to kids,” she said. “I just love the fascination that they had with things that adults take for granted. I think it would just be cool to help kids progress, and find confidence in their voice, despite the fact that they may have a speech or a language disorder.”
Picking Spain for her Fulbright application was an easy choice. Spanish was spoken in her childhood home, and she studied abroad in southern Granada during her sophomore year. Teaching in Spain has a family connection as well, as Oversen’s brother went there to teach English.
This time, Oversen will be stationed in the Canary Islands.
“The Canary Islands was never really on my radar, so when I found out I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s going to be quite an experience.’ I’ve never lived on an island before.”
Since graduation, Oversen has been working as an assistant teacher at an early childhood education center in Northbrook, Ill. When she completes her Fulbright stay, she plans on applying for graduate school, with the University of Illinois on the list.
“I’ve made kind of a master list of graduate schools. Almost all the schools are in Illinois, and a few out-of-state options. But I think I’d like to stay close to home, whether that be in Champaign or in Chicago.”
Fatima Husain uses magnetic resonance imaging in her research.
Dr. Fatima Husain, professor of speech and hearing science, has been named the 2022 King J. and Marjorie R. McCristal Distinguished Scholar in the College of Applied Health Sciences, the most prestigious recognition of scholarly achievement given by the College. The award presentation and McCristal Lecture will take place on August 16, 2022, as part of the AHS Fall College Meeting.
Dr. Husain joined the Department of Speech and Hearing Science as an assistant professor in 2008. She earned her PhD in cognitive and neural systems at Boston University and joined the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, part of the National Institutes of Health, first as a post-doctoral fellow and then as a research fellow.
Dr. Husain uses a combination of computational modeling, brain imaging experiments, and behavioral experiments to research hearing and speech perception, as well as the disorders associated with them, such as hearing loss and tinnitus. Through this multi-method approach, she is able to simulate auditory and speech perception in the brain. The modeling enables her to make predictions that can be tested using behavioral and imaging tools, ultimately facilitating the evaluation of existing therapies and the proposal of novel treatment methods. She is the director of the Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience Lab.
The King James McCristal Scholar Award was established in 1988 to honor King McCristal, dean of AHS from 1961-1973.
More than 2 million people live with aphasia in the U.S.
Bruce Willis’ aphasia diagnosis went public in April 2022.
Aphasia is a communication disorder that affects understanding and expression. It can make it difficult to speak, write, listen, and read. But despite its dire impact on people, aphasia is not a well-known condition. In fact, according to a 2016 survey by the National Aphasia Association (NAA), less than 10 percent of respondents knew what aphasia was.
But the announcement in April 2022 that Bruce Willis would be stepping away from acting following an aphasia diagnosis has raised awareness of the affliction, said Abby Franz, a speech pathologist and clinical instructor in the Department of Speech & Hearing Science at University of Illinois.
“I feel awful for the family and his situation and that he has that diagnosis,” Franz said. “But in 2016, the NAA conducted a survey and found only 8.8 percent of the respondents knew what aphasia was and correctly identified it as a language disorder. So certainly Bruce Wilson’s diagnosis can bring awareness to aphasia. But it’s common. More than two million people are living with aphasia in the United States, and for only 8 percent of the general population to know what it is and know that it was a language disorder, that’s pretty significant.”
Aphasia is an acquired communication disorder, Franz said, which means that it’s something that happens during the course of a life. It’s not something that is present from birth. It is an acquired neurogenic communication disorder, usually as a result of a stroke or some type of brain injury, she said.
There are many types of aphasia, and they are usually diagnosed based on which area of the language-dominant side of the brain is affected and the extent of the damage.
“Typically, it is something traumatic like a type of traumatic brain injury, either they’ve fallen, they’ve hit their head, they’ve been in a car accident, which has affected the area of the brain that controls our speech and language, or a sudden stroke that has left them with difficulty with speech and language,” Franz said.
“But there is another type of aphasia called primary progressive aphasia. That is a degenerative disease that is caused by a type of dementia—frontotemporal lobe dementia. It isn’t a sudden onset change in language. It’s a gradual deterioration of brain tissue in the frontal lobe of our brain that causes, over time, kind of your language to really deteriorate and comprehension of language to deteriorate.”
Franz did not want to speculate about whether Willis has primary progressive aphasia (PPA), but said what she read about his diagnosis lead her to believe he is afflicted with PPA.
“When you have a stroke, it just happens, like suddenly onset. So there wouldn’t be this gradual deterioration” of what has been speculated to have happened to Willis, she said.
Primary progressive aphasia symptoms are akin to dementia. Franz said, with primary progressive aphasia, there would be difficulty with word finding, difficulty sometimes with even just the production of speech, or more effortful for them to even just formulate a sound. They may have a loss in just the fluency of speech as well as the comprehension of speech.
“Somebody who has primary progressive aphasia, if I showed him (a pen), he or she may not be able to name it, but then they also may not even be able to tell me what it does. So they lose that ability to even know this is a pen and we write with it,” she said.
As a speech language pathologist, Franz said she makes aphasia determinations based on how patients perform on certain tasks during a language assessment.
“We’re also testing their comprehension of language. We’re looking at their ability to follow simple directions, follow two-step directions. And we’re looking also at their ability to write after a stroke or after a brain injury because sometimes those go hand-in-hand with the loss of language.”
That said, an aphasia diagnosis is not always without hope. With the help of rehabilitation intervention provided by a speech-language pathologist, people with aphasia from a stroke or other brain injury can improve. SLPs partner with people with aphasia and their families to improve communication skills and develop strategies to support their communication strengths, and may assist with using an augmentative and alternative communication speech devices for those individuals if needed.
However, Franz speculates that because Willis’ family said the actor would pull back from public appearances, she believes he has primary progressive aphasia, and that the prognosis for that is not promising. According to the NAA, the average life expectancy from onset of the disease is 8 to 10 years.
“It is that dire when you get that diagnosis,” Franz said. “It’s a very slow progression of the loss of their communication and along with this kind of dementia too that goes along with it.”
Talking about PPA is “very personal” to Franz.
“My parents’ best friend was diagnosed with primary progressive aphasia in 2017,” she said. “And he’s still living. I see the professional side of it. But now I’m living it on a personal note. And it’s been very hard.
“When he got the diagnosis, I had to do a lot of education with my family about it, especially my parents. Because this was their best friend, and he’s been a part of my life since I was born. And you know, I had to educate them a lot about what primary progressive aphasia is and what it’s going to look like at the end of life. So that is not a great diagnosis to have. So I understand, for the family, why they are probably wanting to shield Bruce Willis from being in the public eye.”
When a public figure such as Willis is afflicted, it often brings an opportunity to educate people about a disease or medical condition.
“The National Aphasia Association is a great website and a great reference for anybody to learn more about aphasia or just to understand more about what it is, and find support groups, within your local community,” Franz said. “It’s a great reference and website to look for if you have a family member or know somebody who has been given the diagnosis of aphasia.”
Apsan Bishwokarma looks over notes in a Warrior-Scholar Project class, hosted at the Chez Veterans Center. (Photo by Ethan Simmons)
While Adam Sherman Jr. sat for the two-hour bus ride from Chicago O’Hare Airport to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus, a pit was forming in his stomach.
He’d spent six years in the Navy, stationed in Japan and California for three years apiece, sometimes working out at sea for six or 12 months at a time. But a few preparatory problem sets for the Warrior-Scholar Project’s academic boot camp had him stumped.
“I didn’t know if I’d be able to knock off the dust and the rust to get going in this program,” said Sherman, who grew up in New Jersey.
After spending four days in the camp absorbing astronomy and physics lectures from University of Illinois faculty at the Chez Veterans Center, Sherman’s first taste of higher education was going “really smooth,” he said.
“They broke it down in a way that’s really digestible, and they’re building it up in a way where it’s really fast-paced, but it’s comprehensible,” he said.
This July, 15 student Veterans took classes and teamed up on projects in the Chez Veterans Center, the University of Illinois’ one-stop shop for military-connected students. The center has hosted the nonprofit Warrior-Scholar Project for the three consecutive years.
The Warrior-Scholar Project, or WSP for short, takes place in college campuses across the country as an eight-day higher ed experience for military Veterans of all ages.
The WSP and Chez Veterans Center’s missions are aligned—both are dedicated to easing the transition of military-connected students back into education and civilian life.
“The premise of WSP is really about showing them they can do it, giving them the confidence they can leave the military and go to a place like the University of Illinois,” said Chez Veterans Center Director of Operations Andy Bender.
“I think what’s great for us in particular is (WSP) follows our mission. We’re all about the successful transition from the military into higher education—this is a good steppingstone for it. But it also gets a lot of our campus partners who may not have connections to the military to come and meet these students.”
WSP Education Programs Coordinator Rebecca Mills called Illinois’ Chez Veterans Center one of the program’s “top campus stakeholders,” for going “above and beyond” for student cohorts. A core component for both organizations: Showing Veterans that the talents they’ve built in the service are transferable to the classroom.
“It’s less the content—we know they’re capable, we know they have the experience. But how do they use the skills they developed in the military to be successful in higher ed?” Mills said.
A whopping 88 percent of Warrior-Scholar Project alumni have either obtained a college degree or are on track to complete one (Photo by Ethan Simmons)
Some students, such as Sherman, enter the Warrior-Scholar Project with no college credits. Others, such as Sergio Perez Jr., a 26-year-old Marine Corps veteran from Oklahoma, used WSP to re-familiarize himself with the pace of university life.
When he left the service in October 2023, he “had one goal in mind: and that was to go back and finish my degree,” he said.
“For me, WSP was a ‘two birds with one stone’ type of deal, because University of Illinois was actually one of the schools I’m thinking about applying to in the future,” Perez added. “When I saw they still had openings for this, I thought, ‘You know what? I can do a quick campus tour while still self improving.’ So this has given me a better understanding of how this campus functions.”
A whopping 88 percent of Warrior-Scholar Project alumni have either obtained a college degree or are on track to complete one, according to their internal statistics. This year, Illinois also hosted WSP’s annual alumni conference, where bootcamp graduates return to network and listen to industry professionals with military connections.
A Veteran careers panel discussion included Mona Dexter, Comcast’s vice president of Military and Veteran Affairs; Michael Pett, Uber’s head of Military and Veteran Programs at Uber; Erica Jeffries Purdo, vice president of Strategy and Operations at Johnson & Johnson; and Tommy Jones, senior director of Military and Talent Programs at Walmart.
During the campus visit, the student cohort got to tour Research Park businesses such as Caterpillar’s Innovation Center and Hourglass Medical, a wearable technology company. Before they left campus, Chez staff brought them to a celebratory visit to the Colonnades Club in Memorial Stadium, itself a tribute to U. of I. veterans who fought in World War I.
“Illinois might be one of the best-kept secrets in higher ed; You walk into a building and learn about a Nobel prize winner who invented something you use every day,” Bender said. “We’ve had a couple people who’ve told us, ‘I wanna come here.’”
This study demonstrates that singers also tend to adjust their vocal production when in different spaces
Faculty from the Dept. of Speech and Hearing Science were involved in the planning and execution of World Voice Day, a symposium designed to build awareness of the human voice.
Researchers from SHS—including assistant professors Keiko Ishikawa, Brian Monson and Pasquale Bottalico—as well as invited speakers discussed their interdisciplinary projects illuminating voice usage and health.
At the end of the two-hour-plus event, the consensus to achieve voice clarity was: The room matters.
One of the presentations was a collaboration of Bottalico, School of Music Associate Professor Yvonne Gonzales Redman and undergraduate student Natalia Łastowiecka, who worked on a study investigating the influence of room acoustics on singers’ voice production. Clarke University Assistant Professor of Music-Voice Joshua Glasner was also part of the presentation.
The researchers said that similar research on instrumentalists suggests that musical performers may be influenced to some extent by the acoustic environment, and this study demonstrates that singers also tend to adjust their vocal production when in different spaces. Bottalico said singers were recorded singing the same musical selection—Giuseppe Giordani’s “Caro mio ben”—consecutively in five different locations on campus: Smith Memorial Room, Smith Recital Hall, KCPA Great Hall, Colwell Playhouse and the Amphitheater. Voice parameters analyzed were vibrato rate, extent, and pitch inaccuracy. Vibrato extent showed significant changes to the different acoustic environments.
The researchers said to combat any voice problems, singers should train in a variety of spaces, and that future studies should investigate functional causes of aberrant vibrato rate, and investigate how to train singers to adapt to different acoustic environments.
Dr. Ishikawa presented with Diana Orbelo of the Mayo Clinic on the “Vocal health among singers.” Orbelo talked about the importance of gargling, calling it the “rock-star quick fix.” Orbelo said gargling—she recommended water, not beer, as some rock stars preferred—can quickly relax the voice. Ishikawa talked about The Lombard Effect, which is the involuntary tendency of speakers to increase their vocal effort when speaking in loud noise to enhance the audibility of their voice.
Ishikawa said that noisy environments are difficult for anyone to speak intelligibly but they are more difficult for people with voice disorders. Most of these people undergo voice therapy as a part of their treatment, where they learn to use vocal production techniques.
“We wanted to know which technique most effectively improves intelligibility in noise and found twang was the best one, compared to operatic resonant voice and “clear speech,” she said.
“Because noise changes the way people talk—which is the Lombard effect—we thought it would make it difficult for people to use learned therapy techniques. Our recent study showed otherwise, however. People did better with using a technique called “clear speech” when they were hearing the noise. This finding was unexpected and needs further exploration,” Ishikawa said.
Orbelo added that certain sounds, such as twang, as Ishikawa mentioned or talking like a gangster—think Edward G. Robinson In “The Last Gangster”—can help cut through noisy environments.
Monson’s presentation was on the “Directivity of singing voice.” Monson talked about singers’ need to get accommodated to acoustic spaces because they “rely on auditory feedback to regulate vocal output.”
But directivity of a voice matters as much as reflective surfaces because sounds “don’t necessarily go in all directions.”
Other presenters included Dario D’Orazio from the Universita’ di Bologna, Italy, on the “Auralization of soprano;” lan Howell of the New England Conservatory of Music, who presented on “Spectrographic and perceptual analysis of the singing voice,” and Mary Pietrowicz, a Senior Research Scientist at the Illinois Applied Research Institute, presented on “Application of machine learning for voice quality detection among actors.”
I love doing projects, so I spent a lot of time doing those. I was able to even refurbish a 100-year-old round dining room table, and I love how it turned out. I also enjoyed having lazy days with my husband and my dog when I wasn’t working on coursework.
What inspired you to pursue a MHA degree?
I started my undergraduate college career thinking I wanted to be a doctor, then I switched to being a nurse. I even took a CNA course through Parkland College, and I realized that the clinical side of healthcare was just not for me. I knew I wanted to have a career in healthcare, so that led me to getting my Bachelors in Community Health. Once I was done with that, I knew I wanted to have the ability to hold a leadership position in healthcare someday, which ultimately led me to purse a MHA degree.
Why did you choose Illinois for your MHA?
My choice to go to Illinois for college started when I was super young. That’s why I pursued my undergraduate degree at Illinois, and I loved the university so much that I decided to stay two more years to complete the MHA program.
What advice do you have for current students OR prospective students?
Enjoy your time as a student and take advantage of all of the opportunities the program and university have to offer. I know all too well what it’s like to feel like you’re behind, like you should be onto the next step of life already. BUT once your time as a student is over, you have to enter the scary world of adulting so take full advantage of the life as a student while you can as everything will work itself out, and you’ll be grateful for all of the experiences you received during your time at Illinois.
Alumni of the College of Applied Health Sciences have myriad career options thanks to the tremendous diversity of programs. We periodically will put the spotlight on an alum to find out what they’re doing now, what experiences they had and what AHS means to them. This week, we talk to Megan-Brette Hamilton, an SHS alum who is now an assistant professor in the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences at Auburn University.
Q: Why did you pick SHS?
A: I remember writing my personal statement in 2011 and, as you do, you write the first part as a general statement and then address a specific school for the latter part. As I was writing the latter part of my personal statement for University of Illinois, I realized how much the school aligned with what I was looking for; reputation, professors, university campus setting. It helped that my aunt, someone who had been in the field for decades before me, encouraged me to choose UIUC, and that both of my parents earned degrees from UIUC. Finally, I got advice from a professor at another university to choose my program according to the person I was going to work with for four plus years. And then I found (former SHS Associate Dept. Head) Laura DeThorne. I emailed her, she and I had a phone conversation and I became excited about the work she was doing in her lab and the idea of learning from her. After that, I was convinced I needed to go to AHS/SHS. From day 1, Dr. DeThorne was a strong advocate for me and as a result I received the Graduate College Distinguished Fellowship Award. To be honest, not having to pay for school, that also helped me make my decision.
Q: Which professors had the most impact on you?
A: As I mentioned before, Dr. DeThorne was an advocate for me from day 1. She wasn’t just my advisor, she was someone who valued my clinical background and my prior experience. We eventually formed a very strong friendship and collegial relationship, and we still collaborate. I also was impacted by Dr. Julie Hengst. Not only was she a committee member of mine for 2 of my projects, but because she also had an extensive clinical career before academia, she was able to speak to me in a way that disarmed me about leaving a job where I was a master clinician to re-learning how to be a student. Dr. Robin L. Jarrett was also someone who has had a huge impact on me. I worked in her lab in a different department across campus. In order for me to be the kind of researcher I am today, I needed to learn other ways of doing research from her perspective. The field of CSD often uses quantitative methods and is predominantly White. Working with Dr. Jarrett helped me to learn about qualitative methods from a sociological perspective and understand academia from someone like me, a Black woman, who also was a full professor. Finally, working with Dr. Cynthia Johnson made a long-lasting impact on me. She was a constant source of encouragement as a growing researcher and I learned first-hand from her about how our field and academia had changed throughout the years.
Q: What course did you most enjoy?
A: You have to remember that I earned a degree that allowed/encouraged me to explore classes in other departments. The way I look at my journey at that stage of my life was to take what I knew about my field in the 17 years I’d been in it and then add to it other content areas to enhance the impact I wanted to have on the field of CSD. All that to say, Language, Identity, and the Politics of Schooling taught by Dr. Anne Haas Dyson in the College of Education was a course I really enjoyed. I loved this course because it brought together all of the areas I was passionate about, language, culture, education, and communication. It was a class that wasn’t afraid to talk about race and class and dialects. And it used qualitative methods:) It reminded me why I decided to return to school at the ripe old age of 34, lol.
Q: Did you enter AHS knowing your career path, or did AHS help you decide?
A: As I mentioned earlier, I entered into the PhD program at age 34, after having had a first career as a practicing speech-language pathologist. I entered the program knowing that I was going to have three outcomes; 1) I was going to learn about some amazing content areas that I’d never been privy to, 2) I was going to learn how to do research, and 3) I was going to earn my doctorate. After that, I wasn’t sure what I’d do. I think being in the program prepared me well for my next steps even though I wasn’t sure what they’d be exactly. I ended up going into academia and constantly call myself “the accidental professor,” lol. I also didn’t know where my research focus would end up when I first started. I originally entered the program to study language processing differences with a concentration in cognitive neuroscience and ended up studying cultural-linguistic diversity with a focus on African American English. To be honest, being in the program helped me see a gap in our field that I could fill, so that’s what I’ve been working on ever since.
Q: Did your AHS experience lead to your current job?
A: Yes. I earned a doctorate from a research-intensive university in a department where I was taught how to do research and provided opportunities to teach and supervise. The skills I acquired in the program, including opportunities across departments and disciplines, allowed me to confidently apply for a tenure-track assistant professor position; which is my current job.
Q: What was your favorite on-campus experience?
A: As a daily enjoyment, I really loved working with my PhD classmates. We were from all different backgrounds and studied so many different areas of communication. We learned so much from each other about life and our field. As a one-time kind of experience, I have to say that it was when I ended up working with a wonderful group of doctoral students from the College of Education and being awarded an internal grant. We used it to put on a 2-day workshop aimed at reimagining education for youth in and beyond the classroom. We brought in Drs. Geneva Smitherman, Ana Celia Zentella, H. Samy Alim, and David E. Kirkland. I loved being around all of those intellectual minds and inserting my communication sciences and disorders perspectives into their conversations of education and language.
Q: What does AHS mean to you?
A: I saw AHS as a place that provided me with opportunities to connect with a variety of people and to grow as a researcher and educator. As I said earlier, I originally entered the program to study language processing differences and ended up studying cultural-linguistic diversity. The beauty is that AHS was a place that allowed me to do either. As a result, I was able to become a researcher with a strong interdisciplinary focus who impacts clinical practice within the field of speech-language pathology and beyond.
Dr. Megan-Brette Hamilton is an assistant professor at Auburn University and an ASHA certified speech-language pathologist (SLP)/communication specialist. Prior to academia, Dr. Hamilton worked as an SLP for 10 years in New York City, the largest school district in the U.S., where most of her caseload consisted of African American and Hispanic children. Currently, her research focuses on the classroom/educational and clinical experiences of speakers of other dialects of English, with a particular focus on African American English-speaking children and adults. Her passion lies in exploring the intersection of culture, language/dialect, communication, and literacy. Dr. Hamilton’s work also focuses on the cultural-linguistic competence and perspectives of professionals and students working with culturally-linguistically diverse populations. Through her work, she engages with such professionals by educating them on the importance of recognizing and validating language variations, culture, and identity; thereby raising one’s cultural-linguistic competence. Dr. Hamilton is the host of the Honeybee Connection podcast, author of Successful Strategies for Classroom Communication, and owner of www.meganbrettehamilton.com where she blogs and provides resources.
The main objective is to establish an international center of excellence for hearing research that transforms the field by using artificial intelligence and Big Data to translate research into practical clinical solutions
Department of Speech and Hearing Science Professor Fatima Husain received $125,000 in seed grant funding from the Discovery Partners Institute for her proposal titled “Hearing Health Institute.”
Fatima Husain’s grant will allow for the collection of brain imaging data (Photo by Brian Stauffer)
The main objective for Husain’s proposal is to establish an international center of excellence for hearing research that transforms the field by using artificial intelligence and Big Data to translate research into practical clinical solutions.
“I think insufficient resources (are being) directed towards studying hearing disorders using brain imaging,” Husain said. “The idea, the crux of it (is), can we create a public repository of previously-collected brain imaging data of individuals with normal hearing and various hearing disorders Brain imaging can be very valuable but it is also expensive. It’s extremely insightful in a condition like tinnitus, which is a subjective disorder. It can be very helpful in figuring out the impact of hearing loss and aging and differentiating between the two.”
Husain’s team will develop AI and Big Data tools to address three main areas: (1) prediction of clinical outcomes to motivate early intervention, (2) biomarker development to accelerate development of new and effective treatments, and (3) developing patient-centered treatment strategies to restore healthy hearing especially targeting underserved communities.
The idea of Big Data comes in with the creation of the Hearing Health Institute, which will allow for the collection of brain imaging data from about 500 study participants with partner institutions such as Northwestern University and Washington University in St. Louis, Husain said. The team intends to expand the repository by bringing in other affiliate labs.
“We are not just focused on only the hearing aspect of it. We have acquired data from a number of questionnaires testing different things. Other labs may have a lot more of neuropsychological workup, for instance. This additional data is necessary to make sense of the brain images and to compare groups. The images by themselves are not very useful. The metadata about patient characteristics along with the brain imaging big data will allow us to accelerate translational research.”
Another focus for the Hearing Health Institute is to motivate early intervention, Husain said. According to one large-scale longitudinal study Husain cited, as you get hearing loss you seem to cognitively age earlier.
“The idea then, is can we mitigate this kind of cognitive impairment by giving early intervention? By giving amplification earlier, how does it help? (What) we want to do with HHI is to map changes in brain function across the lifespan as a result of hearing loss and include intervention studies where available.
“Like among 55-year-olds, for instance, they show people with hearing loss tend to be slower at doing certain tasks. And that’s because they can’t hear very well. These are individuals with mild to moderate hearing loss who do not wear hearing aids yet. They have slightly different emotional network engagement and other possible changes. So if we map this out a little better it will motivate, perhaps, early interventions.”
Husain’s project also wants to find a way to better serve underserved communities.
“We’re trying to have a sort of the summer internship program, if everything goes well, next summer. And, we are trying to see if college students from Chicago and Champaign-Urbana, from underrepresented groups who have expertise is STEM and get them interested in hearing health and neuroscience.”
“We also want to partner with corporations to devise cheap solutions for hearing health, such as, smart phone-based apps.”
Illinois recognized 16 staff, including SHS office manager Andrea Paceley
Andrea Paceley provides support to SHS’ graduate programs (Photo provided)
Sixteen civil service employees were recognized for exceptional performance by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign—eight this year and eight in 2020. For the second consecutive year, concerns related to the COVID-19 pandemic precluded a banquet for employees honored with the Chancellor’s Distinguished Staff Award.
Each recipient receives $1,000 and a plaque. Recipients’ names also are engraved on a plaque displayed in the Illinois Human Resources Office. The names of past winners are online.
Permanent staff members with at least two years of service and retired employees in status appointments during the calendar year may be nominated for the award. A committee recommends finalists, who are then approved by Chancellor Robert Jones.
Experiences in managing pandemic-related issues came to the forefront in many of the nomination forms for 2021 recipients, including Andrea Paceley in the Department of Speech and Hearing Science in the College of Applied Health Sciences.
Paceley, the office manager of SHS, provides support to the graduate program – including graduate admissions – and carries out general office duties.
“The pandemic required a pivot on how we conduct recruitment events, such as our open house for admitted students. Andrea worked closely with the Educational Policy Committee and director of graduate studies to transition to a virtual format,” wrote nominator Ian B. Mertes, an assistant professor of speech and hearing science. “This required a tremendous amount of effort on Andrea’s part to help develop materials, ensure that necessary information was obtained from faculty, interface with the prospective students, schedule the events and send invites, and follow-up with attendees.”
Paceley’s workstation in the front office makes her the department’s first point of contact. “Those who call, e-mail or stop in are greeted with a friendly personality and a willingness to assist. On the occasion when she does not know the answer, she tracks it down and responds quickly,” Mertes wrote. ”She also sends timely reminders to make sure tasks have been completed, keeping departmental operations running smoothly.”
If hearing above 8 kHz is not important, why is the human auditory system capable of hearing up to 20 kHz?
Brian Monson (Photo by Brian L. Stauffer)
Can you imagine having a conversation that included none of the following consonant sounds: s, sh, f, and ph? Known as voiceless fricatives, much of their energy occurs at the range of human hearing above 8 kilohertz (kHz), called extended high frequencies. In general, consonants tend to have more energy at the extended high frequencies than vowels. Yet conventional clinical hearing tests do not assess the performance of the auditory system above 8 kHz—which is above the highest notes on a piano—because of a longstanding assumption that hearing above 8 kHz is not important.
As Speech and Hearing Science Assistant Professor Brian Monson explains, the assumption took root during the development of the telephone about 100 years ago, when speech signals had to be compressed for transmission across wires. Early researchers simply cut out certain frequencies and asked people if they could still understand what was being said.
“Basically, they found that you didn’t need to hear frequencies above 3 or 4 kHz to have really good intelligibility,” he said, “and that got interpreted as ‘energy at higher frequencies is not important for speech.’”
For more than 10 years, Dr. Monson has been intrigued by and trying to answer the question, “If hearing above 8 kHz is not important, why is the human auditory system capable of hearing up to 20 kHz?” He recently received a five-year, $2 million grant from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders to continue his work in this area with a study titled “The ecological significance of extended high-frequency hearing in humans,” a study on which he will collaborate with researchers at the University of North Carolina and Boys Town National Research Hospital.
Extended high frequencies and noise
In this area of research, Dr. Monson’s basic hypothesis is that not only does extended high-frequency hearing have utility for humans, it plays a role in speech perception. His research group was one of the first to examine the value of extended high frequencies in the speech signal, and the first to demonstrate that extended high frequencies help listeners to determine whether speakers are facing them or turned away from them.
His research has scientific implications, of course, and expanding the state of knowledge in speech and hearing science means a great deal to Dr. Monson. There also is the potential for practical applications of his findings as well, for audiology testing, diagnosis, and intervention.
First of all, only testing below 8 kHz in the clinic does not measure the true function of the auditory system. Extended high-frequency hearing loss is the most common loss in humans because it occurs naturally with aging, with substantial loss occurring even by middle age. So if extended high frequencies are found to play a significant role in speech comprehension, everyone eventually will be affected and everyone will have undiagnosed, or hidden, hearing losses which are not detected by standard audiograms. To date, Dr. Monson and his colleagues have found a modest relationship between extended high frequencies and speech comprehension, but, importantly, it is in noisy environments that extended high frequencies are the most valuable.
“The number one complaint of hearing aid users, for many years, has been that they still have a hard time understanding speech in noisy situations,” Dr. Monson said. “Hearing aids do not represent extended high frequencies.”
Is the impact on speech comprehension large enough to justify taking on the challenge of developing new hearing aid technologies that restore extended high-frequency hearing? That is one of the questions that he hopes to address in the newly funded study. It will expand on a study published in 2019 that simulated a cocktail party but used only two background talkers. The new study will create an even more realistic noisy environment by using multiple talkers in different locations around a listener, as well as realistic reverberations that recreate how sound bounces around different room settings. It also will include a localization experiment to investigate whether extended high frequencies help listeners to determine where the talker of interest is located, with the assumption that this ultimately helps listeners to tune out other talkers.
While he would like his research to result in effective restorative technologies for individuals with extended high frequency hearing loss, Dr. Monson is excited that it already provides compelling evidence for assessing extended high-frequency hearing in the audiology clinic. In a 2020 paper in Hearing Research, he and others argued that implementation of extended high-frequency audiometry into clinical practice is relatively easy. Furthermore, measurements of hearing loss at extended high frequencies do predict speech perception ability in noise, suggesting such measures could be useful in identifying individuals at risk for listening difficulties in noisy situations. As he continues his research in this area, he hopes that continuing to present his findings through journals and conferences that target audiologists will positively impact clinical practice.
