restoring hearing with mouse ears
in a previous life, i ran sound for local bands, and was pretty much constantly trying to fight the “louder is better” approach to music. i’d talk to musicians about their playing, and their sound, and all that… and once in a while the conversation would turn to volume. i may have been pretty radically conservative in my youth, but i kept trying to explain to people who love music that if they love it so much, they might want to retain their hearing for a while and not abuse it quite so much.
the thing about hearing is that it depends on little hairs in your ears to work, and those things can get bent, broken or otherwise damaged by all kinds of things – one of them being REALLY LOUD NOISES. and once your hearing is shot, well, it’s shot.
so, being a music fan, and being exposed to musicians for most of my life, hearing is a sensitive subject. so when news of people doing restore-the-hearing research, i took notice.
jeffrey corwin and stefan heller are working at the marine biological laboratory on mouse adult stem cells to grow replacement inner-ear noise sensors. for now, there’s a link right on the front page of the lab’s site, but you can see the press release as well.
i’m not sure what mouse stem cells are doing in a marine biological laboratory, but as long as they’re on a track to fix aging rockstars, i guess i won’t ask silly questions.