The Manchester Centre for Audiology and Deafness (ManCAD) held it’s inaugural CAPers (Clinical Auditory Papers) conference on September 16 and 17 at the Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester.

The conference had a dual purpose – that of honouring Professor Dave Moore’s upcoming retirement, and establishing a new UK-based conference as forum for audiologists and auditory scientists to share clinical research and needs in an interactive collaborative setting.

We wanted to honour Dave Moore, Professor of Auditory Neuroscience, because he has been an integral part of the hearing research at ManCAD for the last 15 or so years.

Dave, who was born and educated in Melbourne, Australia, spent over 30 years in the UK, first as a Professor of Neuroscience at Oxford University, and then as Director of the MRC Institute of Hearing Research in Nottingham. In 2013, he moved to the US to become Director of the Communication Sciences Research Center at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital (CCH) and Professor of Otolaryngology and Neuroscience at the University of Cincinnati. Throughout that time, he maintained a part-time position at the University of Manchester as a member of the Hearing Health theme of the NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Centre and through his work with Manchester University Foundation Trust.

We invited Dave and some of his many collaborators and mentees to share experiences and scientific learnings that arose during their joint research endeavours.

We heard how Dave’s research has spanned basic neuroscience in ferrets, listening difficulties in children, use of the UK biobank for understanding associations between hearing loss and other factors, and public health approaches to increasing access to hearing care in low- and middle-income countries.

Researchers who shared their stories of collaborations with Dave were Astrid van Wieringen (Belgium), Cas Smits (Netherlands), Charlie Liberman (USA), De Wet Swanepoel (RSA), Jan-Willem Wasserman (Netherlands) Kevin Munro (UK), Lisa Hunter (USA), Mel Ferguson (Australia), and Piers Dawes (Australia).

During the remainder of the conference, we heard presentations and saw posters about current clinically-focused audiology research being conducted around the world. The range of topics was broad, spanning the continuum from paediatric audiology through to older adult audiological rehabilitation, auditory neuroscience to social psychology and hearing, and small-scale studies to modelling and big data.

Some highlights from the 25 presentations and 18 posters included:

A presentation by Ian Wiggins, showing that subjective listening effort (How much effort was needed to understand the sentences?) was more sensitive to signal-to-noise ratio than subjective performance (How many of the sentences did you understand?), which in turn was more sensitive than measured performance (percent correct). This lead to the conclusion that subjective listening effort is a sensitive outcome measure for assessing speech understanding at SNRs encountered in typical listening situations. 

Presentations highlighting gaps and novel approaches to paediatric testing and care, ranging from suggestions for change to clinical pathways (Adrian Davis), the need for increased awareness and education (Hannah Stewart, Ciara Kelly), use of novel stimuli for paediatric threshold testing (Michael Stone, Josephine Marriage), and approaches to assessing listening difficulties (Harvey Dillon; Astrid van Wieringen; Xeuhan Zhou).

Presentations illustrating how large datasets and statistical modelling can provide insights into associations between hearing loss and other conditions (Megan Readman; Kevin Munro), fitting hearing aids (Oliver Zobay), and modelling hearing loss (Charlotte Vercammen), while Michael Akeroyd showed data underlining the need for careful scrutiny of data before conclusions are drawn.

 

Words of wisdom for researchers

 

We were able to keep conference registration costs to a minimum thanks to our sponsors to whom we are extremely grateful: WS Audiology, Sonova, Specsavers, Interacoustics, NIHR Manchester BRC, and an NIHR Senior Investigator award. Based on the considerable positive feedback we have received, we intend to hold the second edition of ManCAD CAPers in 2026. We hope you will consider joining us.

In the meantime, consider heeding the Dave Moore’s words of wisdom ‘Ask research questions that excite you and make those questions as big as possible’, ‘Do give up sometimes, persistence isn’t always the best course’, ‘Work in a place that you love; other like-mindeds will love it too’, and ‘Work with great people’.

In addition, for those early in their career ‘Spend a significant chunk of time, at least a year in another country early on in your career’ and for those who are leaders, ‘Try to give everyone what they want and be nice about it’.

Source: Audiology News UK issue 11 November-December 2024