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But no matter how well the gene therapy works, the researchers recognize that Aissam may never be able to understand or speak a language, Dr. Germiller said. Th
by twostorytower 3y ago
But no matter how well the gene therapy works, the researchers recognize that Aissam may never be able to understand or speak a language, Dr. Germiller said. The brain has a narrow window for learning to speak beginning around ages 2 to 3, he explained. After age 5, the window for learning spoken language is permanently shut.
Wow that's incredibly sad, but I am glad that this will eventually get into the ears of thousands of deaf newborns. Incredible medical advancement. Gives me hope that one day my tinnitus may have a cure.
- jv22222 3y agoYou probably know about all about meniere's. If not, have you tried going off salt?
- Etheryte 3y agoHave you tried going off pseudoscience?
- holdsleeper 3y agoWhat part of their comment was "pseudoscience"?
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> What part of their comment was "pseudoscience"? Is hypernatremia a cause of Meniere’s?
- MathMonkeyMan 3y agoReducing salt might help with symptoms[1]. [1]: https://www.mountsinai.org/health-library/special-topic/m-ni-re-disease-self-care https://www.mountsinai.org/health-library/special-topic/m-ni...
- jv22222 3y agoExactly. Additionally, a major symptom of Meniere’s is a tinnitus, something the OP had issues with. It's funny that someone would call pseudoscience without doing a lick of research, which is... well, not very scientific ;)
- doublerabbit 3y ago> After age 5, the window for learning spoken language is permanently shut. It's fascinating how our brains are wired in such a way to enable read-only mode at an certain age in development.
- s1artibartfast 3y agoI think it is more like telling the marketing team that you can't add an HDMI port to the computuer because it has already finished the production run. That is to say, it is as much of a hardware issue as a software issue.
- shermantanktop 3y agoGet ready to repeat yourself, because the marketing team really wants that port. The CMO just said "We should really add an HDMI port in a code patch because it would help OEM sales a lot." A sales engineer has agreed and is scheduling a brainstorm session.
- SnazzyJeff 3y ago> It's fascinating how our brains are wired in such a way to enable read-only mode at an certain age in development. You're responding to a quote that is trivially false with a quick google. Ok.
- ricardobeat 3y ago> the window for learning spoken language is permanently shut People still learn languages with completely different sounds when they are much older? Japanese, the african click-sound languages... is it some lower-level abstraction that goes missing?
- teaearlgraycold 3y agoI think it’s the ability to understand any language through sound. Presumably other languages learned lean heavily on what you already know from other languages.
- GauntletWizard 3y agoI think the true answer is not impossibility, but significant, near insurmountable difficulty. The sound processing is not hooked up to cognition in the way it would be in a brain that had always had sensory input from the ears. Aissam would first need to learn to differentiate tones, voices, mouth-sounds, consonants vs vowels, etc. That's a lot to ask of a brain that had no understanding of that form of input at all. But all of this may turn out to be untrue! Our understanding of language acquisition comes from Feral Children[1], who had no language understanding at all, but could hear. Aissam has language skills, though developed late - The article mentions he started learning Spanish Sign Language at 8 years old. That's already a remarkable feat. This might overturn our views of language acquisition, which were mostly formed in the 1800's; Pedagogy has come a long way since then. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_acquisition#As_a_typically_human_phenomenon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_acquisition#As_a_typi...
- lucubratory 3y agoFor reference, the language you're thinking of is Xhosa
- mkl 3y agoThey said "languages" for a reason. There are quite a few: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_consonant#Languages_with_clicks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_consonant#Languages_with...
- lawlessone 3y agoEven still there's plenty of situations where this could save his life.
- spywaregorilla 3y agoHow are born deaf people able to learn to speak if this is the case?
- stank345 3y agoThe sensory medium is separate from one's capacity to learn and use language. Sign languages have grammar, vocabulary, "accents" etc just like spoken languages.
- zamadatix 3y agoI think they mean how can a person born deaf learn to make speech if the above quote says this individual will not be able to speak a language. I think the answer to that is it's more "they won't be able to make speech like a person born with hearing would do by listening and naturally learning" rather than "they won't be able to try to make sounds with their voice they are not able to process auditorily".
- spywaregorilla 3y agoMoreso comprehend it. It seems impossible to suggest that a person could learn to vocalize language but not to understand those vocalizations. It may be impossible in spite of what it seems.
- janeerie 3y agoDeaf children can be taught to speak by very explicitly demonstrating tongue/throat position. It's a pretty arduous process and has fallen out of favor, so most deaf people who don't get a cochlear implant will use sign language only. However, with early implantation language acquisition is relatively easy (thought it varies per child).
- smeej 3y agoIs it the capacity to learn to speak a language, or the capacity to learn to understand spoken language that shuts? Or both? It's not quite clear from the way it's phrased here if maybe the inability to speak is only a consequence of the inability to understand, or if it's theoretically separable. Aren't there people who learn to speak, albeit with an accent, even though they have never been able to hear? So they might learn to read lips and speak, even though they wouldn't be able to understand a spoken language if they gained the ability to hear? I ask because I'm interested to know which parts of brain research might eventually try to prop that door open. Granted, most people born with this genetic condition would probably just be treated shortly after birth and learn spoken language during the normal time frame, not go through some special other treatment just to prop that mental door open, but I'd still be interested to understand what's actually going on in the brain better.
- makeitdouble 3y ago> Aren't there people who learn to speak, albeit with an accent, even though they have never been able to hear? Yes, some people go through "speech therapy" and train to emit the right sounds while not hearing the output (but I think they rely on the inner vibrations ?). Understandably that requires a ton of training on top of existing skills and not everyone ends up with something workable. Part of the existing skills is the the ability to vocalize the sounds in the first place, and if a kid never intentionally vocalized for 11 years, I wonder if their vocal cords could ever develop to a point they can make the range of sounds needed.
- smeej 3y agoIt does seem like the difficulty, then, must be with the comprehension of spoken language, then, not strictly the speaking of it. I had wondered about this for awhile, how when you see adults have their cochlear implants turned on for the first time, sometimes they respond as though they do understand what people are saying to them. I had wondered how they could possibly know how to interpret the sounds as specific words, even if they knew the words, but this makes it seem like that's not what's happening. They're probably still reading lips to understand the words themselves.
- tedd4u 3y agoCame here to say I hope this can someday lead to a tinnitus cure :'|
- iopq 3y agoFunnily enough, just listening to high pitched noises reduces my tinnitus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUZOSg3a1rk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUZOSg3a1rk it turns out it's a "phantom limb" problem of hearing - when your high pitch hearing ability decreases, you start to have phantom sounds "fill in the blanks" at the frequency it got worse at you can test it yourself by generating sine waves and seeing when your hearing becomes worse https://www.szynalski.com/tone-generator/ https://www.szynalski.com/tone-generator/ mine drops off at 12.5KHz and goes almost completely silent above 16KHz the tinnitus frequency is about 13Khz! Trying to listen to quiet noises between 12Khz and 16Khz trained me to be more sensitive to those sounds and to generate less tinnitus
- magicalhippo 3y agoAh interesting. I had noticed my tinnitus would get worse when I had been sitting in silence for a while, especially with over-ear headphones to further dampen ambient sounds (ie album ran out and I was so preoccupied with coding I didn't put another on). Fortunately mine is just at a mild annoyance level so far, but will try your trick.
- ebiester 3y agoI am confused at this: the window that people speak about is largely one of having any language. Aissam seems to have a language, albeit an idiomatic one that was developed to communicate with parents. If so, he has developed the speech pathways, even if any given language will be one of second language acquisition. Now there may be another reason, but the article is either missing context or the question was not expressed in a way where the doctor answered in a way that follows the science around the critical language period, as I understand it (at least)
- SamBam 3y agoYeah, this seems confusing. Obviously his brain has a solid understanding of language, and he even recently learned a new language (Spanish Sign Language) so learning another language should be possible. It sounds like the researchers are saying there's something special about learning spoken language. But it seems to me that there can't have been many cases similar to his.
- mlyle 3y ago> It sounds like the researchers are saying there's something special about learning spoken language. But it seems to me that there can't have been many cases similar to his. We've learned a lot from people who have received cochlear implants at different ages. Earlier implantation is strongly associated with functional spoken language use and fluent speech. There's a big benefit before age 5; a large proportion of those implanted before 24 months basically have normal language skills, while few after age 5 ever fully "catch up." edit: Here's a study of prelingually deafened adult outcomes with CIs https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5720870/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5720870/ All of those studied had acquired spoken language before implantation and had some degree of effective hearing earlier in life, so were not fully deafened before the language acquisition window. The implants provide an improvement of quality of life but do not allow most of even this population to e.g. understand spoken language on TV without subtitles.
- Retric 3y ago
- fouc 3y agoI suspect this is a reference to the neural mapping around auditory signals, but given that the brain is still capable of changing at any point in life I disagree it's "permanently shut"
- blitz_skull 3y agoI find this incredibly hard to believe with all of the research on neuroplasticity. Not to mention there’s a VERY famous case that proves this is not a hard and fast rule: Helen Keller.
- bradrn 3y agoHelen Keller had already learnt a ‘home sign’ system, which was presumably language-like enough to allow her to learn English later.
- avarun 3y agoAnd this kid knows sign language too.
- hmcq6 3y agoI just can't imagine we have that much hard data on the topic. Unless there have been massive breakthroughs in hearing aid tech that I'm unaware of. Cochlear implants are amazing but my understanding is they're not 100% restorative. To make a bad metaphorical comparison with blindness, they're like glasses that restore your vision but if the only shape produced were shutter shades. (pic for reference: http://lh6.ggpht.com/nML2bdK30Z0OS3cHBINnLcXCv6XVI8dWpLvMu8mxYnG7-ggBhxKem95RzfAKFTxKAvi8_a74LX3BVdZXDr0kWiLY http://lh6.ggpht.com/nML2bdK30Z0OS3cHBINnLcXCv6XVI8dWpLvMu8m...)
- phire 3y agoWorth keeping in mind that Helen Keller didn't loose her hearing (and sight) until an illness at 19 months old. At this age, a child's brain has already locked in the sounds for their native language and lost the ability to learn non-native sounds (hell, research suggests that unborn infants can recognise the difference between their mothers native language and foreign languages before they even leave the womb). The typical child will have been using single word sentences for months and just starting to move onto two word sentences. Keller might have regressed to zero language abilities after her illness, but she didn't need to start completely from scratch when she learned how to speak.
- heyoni 3y agoIs this one in deaf children or others with receptive language but no ability to speak?
- SnazzyJeff 3y ago> Gives me hope that one day my tinnitus may have a cure. We are all chained to reality. We must all accept reality or kill ourselves trying to.
- SnazzyJeff 3y ago> But no matter how well the gene therapy works, the researchers recognize that Aissam may never be able to understand or speak a language, Dr. Germiller said. The brain has a narrow window for learning to speak beginning around ages 2 to 3, he explained. After age 5, the window for learning spoken language is permanently shut. This is trivially false. How are you acting like this person can be taken seriously? At best, they're wildly hyperbolic in their statements. At worst, they're funded to push a polemic.
- MathMonkeyMan 3y agoHow is it trivially false? I know nothing about it.
- judge2020 3y agoMaybe the quote is about the critical period hypothesis[0], which is not universally accepted. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_period_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_period_hypothesis
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- SnazzyJeff 3y agoWell, the part that was claimed. "The brain has a narrow window for learning to speak beginning around ages 2 to 3, he explained. After age 5, the window for learning spoken language is permanently shut." The person seems to mistake the term "speech" for the phrase "language comprehension"—the field moved past that decades ago.
- iteria 3y ago
- TomK32 3y agoThe brain is a surprising organ, it's only been four month since the kid can hear anything and maybe the brain is powerful enough to use this first-time influx of new impulses as the same start when learning language as a baby. After all, the brain needs 25 years to fully form.
- mannyv 3y agoThe problem with these kinds of statements is they're impossible to test. They depend on 'found' examples, like kids raised by wild animals. But those kids were different.
- anonymousnotme 3y agoIt is my understanding that psychedelics can open up that learning window. I wonder if that could be used to benefit in this case. (I imagine a lot of people might be opposed to having a minor take psychedelics; but if it works, does it matter?)
- joedevon 3y agoLook up neosensory. They are a company by David Eagleman who has some amazing TED Talks. They have a product that treats tinnitus.
- lulznews 3y agoSounds like clear bs.