Special Sessions and Keynote Lectures

Special Sessions and Keynote Lectures

Keynote Lectures

Age-related hearing loss and self-reported hearing difficulty: Findings from a longitudinal cohort study
Judy R. Dubno, Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston SC, USA
Statistical Audiology: From diagnostic test batteries to auditory profiles for targeted treatment
Birger Kollmeier, Medical Physics & Cluster of Excellence Hearing4All, Universität Oldenburg, Germany
Hearing-Intervention Outcome Measures in Adults: Changing How Meaningful Change is Determined
Larry E. Humes, Department of Speech, Hearing and Language Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington IN, USA

Invited Lecture

Genetic, Epigenetic, & the Omics Sciences for deafness diagnosis & therapy
Alessandro Martini, Honorary Professor of Otolaryngology, University of Padua, Italy

Panel Discussion

Over-the-Counter (OTC) Hearing Aids: Recent Findings and Future Directions
Organizer and moderator: Larry E. Humes, Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA. Speakers: Todd A. Ricketts, Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, USA; Sumitrajit Dhar, Roxelyn and Richard Pepper Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA and Jasleen Singh, Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, University of Massachusetts Amherst, MA, USA.

Special Sessions

Hearing at work: costs and benefits of effortful listening
Coordinator: Adriana A. Zekveld, Section Hear and Hearing, Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Amsterdam UMC, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Speaking the same language in CI outcome: the ICF
Coordinators: Ilona Anderson, Clinical Research, MED-EL, Austria, and Artur Lorens, Institute of Physiology and Pathology of Hearing, Warsaw, Poland
New Horizons in Auditory Training
Coordinator: Helen Henshaw, NIHR Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre, University of Nottingham (England), British Society of Audiology Special Interest Group for Cognition in Hearing

Industry Partnership Presentations

Panel session - Speaking the same language in CI outcome: the ICF

Ilona Anderson (Clinical Research Department, MED-EL GmbH, Innsbruck, Austria) and Artur Lorens (World Hearing Center, Institute of Physiology and Pathology of Hearing, Warsaw/Kajetany, Poland)

Hearing Reimagined: an Auditory Brainstem Implant Journey
Hannah McPierzie, Disability Consultant, Burswood, WA, Australia

ABSTRACTS OF SPECIAL SESSIONS AND LECTURES

Panel Discussion

Over-the-Counter (OTC) Hearing Aids: Recent Findings and Future Directions

Moderator: Larry E. Humes¹. Speakers: Todd A. Ricketts², Sumitrajit Dhar³, and Jasleen Singh⁴

In this session, Professor Ricketts and Professor Dhar will provide 15-minute summaries of their recently published randomized controlled trials on OTC hearing-aid fitting methods, including comparisons of outcomes to standard-of-care audiologist-based fittings. Professor Singh will present a 15-minute overview of her recent and ongoing work capturing the consumer’s perspective on OTC hearing aids, including the identification of barriers to uptake and use of these devices. Brief, 5-minute question periods will follow each presentation with a 30-minute moderated question-and-answer panel discussion at the conclusion of this session.

¹Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA; ²Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, USA; ³Roxelyn and Richard Pepper Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA; ⁴Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, University of Massachusetts Amherst, MA, USA

Special Sessions

New Horizons in Auditory Training

Coordinator: Helen Henshaw, NIHR Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre, University of Nottingham (England), British Society of Audiology Special Interest Group for Cognition in Hearing. Speakers: Helen Henshaw, NIHR Nottingham BRC, University of Nottingham; Jim Dornhoffer, Mayo Clinic; Terrin Tamati, The Ohio State University; Aaron Moberly, Vanderbilt University Medical Center; Lorenzo Picinali, Imperial College London; Debi Vickers, University of Cambridge; Karen Li, Concordia University; Charlie Fisher & Stefanie Kuchinsky, University of Maryland.

Hearing loss is one of the most common chronic health conditions worldwide, with far-reaching consequences for communication, social participation, and cognitive wellbeing. While hearing devices can improve audibility, many people continue to experience difficulties with listening effort and speech understanding, especially in complex or noisy environments. Auditory training (AT) has therefore gained attention as a promising complement to traditional rehabilitation, with growing evidence for its potential to enhance speech perception, cognitive functioning, and quality of life. Still, important questions remain about the mechanisms of benefit, how well training effects transfer to everyday life, and how interventions can be tailored to diverse needs.

This special session explores recent advances and future directions in auditory training. Topics include emerging approaches that combine traditional auditory exercises with digital and immersive technologies, offering new opportunities for more engaging and accessible training. The session also considers how cognitive factors, such as attention and memory, interact with auditory processes and influence rehabilitation outcomes. In addition, new perspectives highlight the importance of individualisation, recognising that factors such as age, cognitive profile, and psychosocial context may shape responsiveness to training.

By bringing together insights from evidence reviews, innovative delivery methods, cognitive frameworks, and real-world applications, this session aims to provide a comprehensive view of the current landscape in auditory training. Collectively, these perspectives support the vision of auditory training as a flexible, individualised, and evidence-based rehabilitation component. The session will emphasise both opportunities and challenges in ensuring that interventions are effective, engaging, and transferable to daily life. In doing so, we highlight a new horizon in auditory training, positioning it as a key element in the evolving field of hearing healthcare.

Hearing at work: costs and benefits of effortful listening.

Coordinator: Adriana A. Zekveld, Section Hear and Hearing, Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Amsterdam UMC, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Communication enables occupational and social participation, and therefore is crucial for health and wellbeing. Many individuals encounter obstacles which prevent successful hearing and listening due to factors such as background noise, complex acoustic scenes, or hearing impairment. Hearing difficulties have a strong negative impact on employees’ lives as they are associated with poorer mental health, reduced ability to connect socially, and increased levels of fatigue and stress. However, applying effort to listening leads to positive consequences as well (good work performance, pleasure, safety, societal participation). This special session on “Hearing at work: costs and benefits of effortful listening” will focus on the consequences (negative as well as positive) of putting effort into listening and the factors associated with its outcomes. These factors include individual aspects as well as the occupational context and relevant listening scenarios

Speaking the same language in CI outcome: the ICF

Ilona Anderson, Clinical Research, MED-EL, Austria, and Artur Lorens, Institute of Physiology and Pathology of Hearing, Warsaw, Poland.

The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) has emerged as an important concept in hearing health and in healthcare in general. The ICF is an initiative of the World Health Organization. It was brought into force two decades ago, after years of gradual development and refinement. It is part of a broader set of frameworks that are used for classifying disease, disability, and health interventions. The purpose of the ICF is to provide a standard language and framework for describing the disabilities and functions that can be associated with health conditions.

The problem that the ICF tries to solve is that terminology can be used and understood quite differently by different people. For example, consider the word “severe” in the context of a health condition. What does “severe” refer to? Does the severity of a condition relate to the degree of impairment caused by that condition, or does it relate to the urgency with which the condition must be treated (like in a severe infection)? When people’s health is at risk, it is important to have well-defined, unambiguous, and clearly understood terminology. That is the purpose of the ICF.

The basic concept and goal of the ICF is to serve as a set of standardized terminology, where each term refers to an objective, measurable feature of a disability associated with a disease or medical condition. In this way, patients, health practitioners, researchers, and other interested parties can have clearer communication among and between each other.

The goal of the HEARRING project presented here has been to develop a standardized suite of validated tests for assessing hearing outcomes in adult cochlear implant users. This suite contains both objective tests (to measure the users’ hearing capacity) and subjective tests (to measure the users’ hearing performance in everyday life, as well as their quality of life, satisfaction, and perceived benefit with their hearing device). Together, this suite of tests will provide a unified and comprehensive framework for evaluating outcomes in adults cochlear implant users in a manner compliant with the ICF framework. The test suite has been validated in a multi-centric clinical trial across 5 countries.

This panel will discuss the ICF for adult cochlear users, including its value, tests required, outcomes, how to work with it in clinical practice and future developments.

Keynote Lectures

Age-related hearing loss: Findings from a longitudinal cohort study of the general population
Judy R. Dubno, Distinguished University Professor and Vice Chair for Research, Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC, USA

The Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) Longitudinal Cohort Study of Age-related Hearing Loss is an ongoing (1988-current) community-based cohort study in Charleston, South Carolina, USA. The purpose of this study is to determine the natural history of hearing loss across the adult lifespan, identify genes and variants that cause or contribute to age-related hearing loss - a common and complex disorder with a strong genetic component, and to provide scientific bases for diagnosis, rehabilitation, and prevention. Participants are continuously enrolled and first undergo a baseline examination, which includes pure-tone thresholds at conventional and extended high frequencies, middle ear measures, speech recognition in quiet and noise, otoacoustic emissions, auditory brainstem responses, a battery of cognitive measures, and responses to self-report questionnaires including demographics, medical history, medications, hearing difficulties, hearing and hearing-aid history, and noise exposure history. Blood samples are obtained for clinical chemistries and DNA extraction for whole exome sequencing. Following completion of the baseline protocol, participants return annually to obtain an updated audiogram, health history, and hearing health history. Every 2-3 years after baseline, participants attend a comprehensive follow-up visit where most of the baseline measures are repeated. Currently, the participant sample includes >1,800 adults 18 to >80 years of age at enrollment (mean age ~60 years) with longitudinal data spanning up to 35 years (~55% female; ~18% Black). Prevalence, incidence, and progression of audiometric hearing loss and associated demographic, health-, and hearing-related factors will be reported, along with generational (birth cohort) differences. Notably, patient-reported outcome measures, such as self-reported hearing difficulty, are an increasingly important component in the comprehensive assessment of the functional abilities of individuals with hearing loss and changes following hearing health interventions. Therefore, comparable findings will be presented for self-reported hearing difficulty measured with the RHHI, the influence of demographic factors on the agreement of the RHHI with audiometric hearing loss, and a comparison of the ability of audiometry and RHHI to predict hearing-aid use. Finally, a brief timeline will recount the 35-year history of the MUSC Longitudinal Cohort Study. [Work supported by NIH/NIDCD]

Statistical Audiology: From diagnostic test batteries to auditory profiles for targeted treatment

Birger Kollmeier, Medical Physics & Cluster of Excellence Hearing4All, Universität Oldenburg, Germany

This talk will highlight major achievements and pitfalls on the way towards statistical audiology, i.e., data-driven approaches to increase the objectivity and reliability of diagnostics and treatment in audiology, which will help rehabilitative audiology to develop open, evidence-based international standards. This talk will review the efforts of our Cluster of Excellence Hearing4All to standardize a battery of audiologic tests with openly available results for 581 adults (Jafri et al., 2025). Based on such rich records with audiometric as well as suprathreshold data, distinct auditory profiles can be generated and optimized via federated learning (i.e., merging of the evidence of the profile classes without simultaneously assessing all data sources, Saak et al., 2025). Once they are established, the correct diagnostic classification of a given patient into a diagnostic case related to a certain profile can be performed with little effort, using, e.g., the virtual hearing clinic via smartphone (Xu, 2025). Moreover, treatment recommendations can be derived via a clinical decision support system mapping diagnostic cases to specific treatment options (Buhl et al., 2022). The first trial and initial fitting of a hearing device can then be simulated using the open Master Hearing Aid (openMHA) in connection with fitting modules of the virtual hearing clinic providing targeted self-fitting options.

Taken together, statistical audiology allows for a completely new hearing health service model which will put the patient in the driver’s seat and largely builds on an open data, open software and open publication culture.

Hearing-Intervention Outcome Measures in Adults: Changing How Meaningful Change is Determined

Larry E. Humes, Department of Speech, Hearing and Language Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington IN, USA

Invited Lecture

Genetic, Epigenetic, & the Omics Sciences for deafness diagnosis & therapy

Alessandro Martini, Honorary Professor of Otolaryngology, University of Padua, Italy

Advances in genetics and molecular biology have substantially improved the understanding of hereditary deafness. The identification of GJB2 (connexin 26) mutations in 1997 represented a major milestone, suggesting straightforward genetic diagnosis. However, phenotypic variability among individuals carrying common mutations, such as 35delG, demonstrated that genotype alone does not fully account for auditory outcomes.

This recognition has directed research toward epigenetics, which regulates gene expression without altering DNA sequence. Epigenetic mechanisms, including DNA methylation, histone modification, and non-coding RNAs, play key roles in cochlear hair cell differentiation, survival, and regeneration. These processes are implicated in noise-induced, ototoxic, and age-related hearing loss, and represent promising therapeutic targets for inner ear repair.

Concurrently, Omics Sciences have expanded auditory research. Genomics provides comprehensive analysis of genome structure and function, enabling precision medicine. Proteomics elucidates protein interactions within the inner ear, including the role of otoferlin and synaptic mechanisms in auditory transduction. Transcriptomics, particularly single-cell RNA sequencing, offers detailed transcriptional maps supporting studies of hair cell regeneration. Metabolomics integrates genetic and environmental influences, identifying biomarkers for sudden hearing loss, ototoxicity, and noise-induced impairment, with potential applications in diagnosis and targeted interventions.

The integration of multi-omics data through artificial intelligence constitutes an emerging frontier. AI-driven approaches hold the potential to synthesize complex datasets, enhance diagnostic accuracy, and guide personalized therapies. While this digital transformation remains in development, it is poised to significantly advance the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of hearing loss.

Industry Partnership Presentations

Panel session - Speaking the same language in CI outcome: the ICF

Ilona Anderson (Clinical Research Department, MED-EL GmbH, Innsbruck, Austria) and Artur Lorens (World Hearing Center, Institute of Physiology and Pathology of Hearing, Warsaw/Kajetany, Poland)

The goal of this HEARRING project has been to develop a standardized suite of validated tests for assessing hearing outcomes in adult cochlear implant users. This suite contains both objective tests (to measure the users’ hearing capacity) and subjective tests (to measure the users’ hearing performance in everyday life, as well as their quality of life, satisfaction, and perceived benefit with their hearing device). Together, this suite of tests will provide a unified and comprehensive framework for evaluating outcomes in adults cochlear implant users in a manner compliant with the ICF framework. The test suite has been validated in a multi-centric clinical trial across 5 countries.

This panel will discuss the ICF for adult cochlear users, including its value, tests required, outcomes, how to work with it in clinical practice and future developments.

Hearing Reimagined: An Auditory Brainstem Implant Journey

Hannah McPierzie, Disability Consultant, Burswood, WA, Australia

This presentation will explore the lived experience of bilateral auditory brainstem implants (ABIs) and the unique rehabilitation journey of transitioning from acoustic to electrical hearing. Drawing on my personal experience as a deafblind individual with Neurofibromatosis Type 2, I will share insights into the challenges that come with adapting to this highly specialized technology.

My story is closely connected to industry collaboration through my role as an ABI Mentor in MED‑EL’s HearPeers program. In this capacity, I provide peer support to others navigating their own ABI journeys, offering practical guidance and encouragement grounded in lived experience. This partnership highlights the value of industry support in bridging the gap between clinical intervention and real‑world outcomes for patients.

The presentation will reflect on the rehabilitation process, including the strategies, supports, and persistence required to adapt to electrical hearing. It will also consider the broader implications for health professionals, researchers, and industry partners working with people who use advanced hearing technologies. By centering the patient voice, this session demonstrates how collaboration between individuals, clinicians, and industry can lead to more responsive care, and improved communication outcomes.

Ultimately, this presentation aims to showcase how industry partnerships, when combined with authentic patient perspectives, can drive innovation while ensuring that technologies truly meet the needs of those who rely on them.

Stay tuned for updates!