Objective This study aims to investigate the auditory sensory gating capacity in Huffaz using an auditory brainstem response (ABR) test with and without psychological tasks. Methods Twenty-three participants were recruited for this study. The participants were comprised of 11 Huffaz who memorized 30 chapters of the Islamic Scripture (from the Quran) and 12 non-Huffaz as the control group. All participants had normal hearing perception and underwent an ABR test with and without psychological tasks. The ABR was elicited at 70 dB nHL using a 3000 Hz tone burst stimulus with a 2-0-2 cycle at a stimulus repetition rate of 40 Hz. The ABR wave V amplitude and latencies were measured and statistically compared. A forward digit span test was also conducted to determine participants’ working memory capacity. Results There were no significant differences in the ABR wave V amplitudes and latencies between Huffaz and non-Huffaz in ABR with and without psychological tasks. There were also no significant differences in the ABR wave V amplitudes and latencies in both groups of ABR with and without psychological tasks. In addition, no significant differences were identified in the digit span working memory score between both groups. Conclusions In this study, based on the ABR findings, Huffaz showed the same auditory sensory gating capacity as the non-Huffaz group. The ABR result was consistent with the digit span working memory test score. This finding implies that both groups have similar working memory performance. However, the conclusion is limited to the specific assessment method that we used in this study.

Purpose: The present study investigated the intra-subject variability in auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) recorded using a vertical montage and compared the results with the ABRs recorded using an ipsilateral montage.Methods: A total of 31 adults with normal hearing were involved in this study. The ABRs from vertical and ipsilateral montages were recorded at 80, 50, and 30 dBnHL using 0.1 ms click stimuli on the right ear with a stimulus rate of 19.1 Hz. Each participant was tested in two clinical sessions with a 7-day interval between sessions. The ABR results between the sessions and montages were compared and statistically evaluated. Results: The ABR results were generally consistent between the two sessions in both the ipsilateral and vertical montages. The test-retest mean differences (test session 2 minus test session 1) between the ipsilateral ABR and vertical montage ABR results were also similar. Coefficient of variation values indicated that more variability was associated with smaller amplitude ABRs than higher amplitude ABRs. Conclusion: The ABR recorded through the vertical montage had, in general, a similar reliability to the ABR recorded using the ipsilateral montage.

Introduction: This discussion paper aims to synthesise available literature on hearing sciences from Islamic perspective and to relate this to the current hearing care practices. The paper focuses on several main scopes: i) the importance of sense of hearing from Islamic and scientific perspectives ii) impacts of hearing impairment iii) limitations in understanding and practicing Islamic teaching due to hearing impairment, iv) Islamic responsibility towards people with hearing impairment, v) current available methods to facilitate Islamic practices among hearing impaired people, and vi) incorporating Islamization in hearing care practice. Design: Narrative review and synthesis Method: Related publications and references were identified through several ways: i) by structured searches in PubMed, Google scholar, Web of Knowledge and Science Direct using the combinations of ‘Islam’, ‘hearing impairment’, ‘hearing loss’, ‘hearing’, ‘social’, learning’, ‘memory’, ‘disability’, ‘Islamic responsibility’, and ‘learning for deaf’ as key words, ii) by inspecting the reference lists of relevant articles, and iii) by identification of relevant references from Quran and Hadith by authors who have background in Quranic studies. Results: The number of publications within the audiology field, which address the aforementioned scopes, is rather limited. Additionally, a review and synthesis of literature from other related fields such as medical, health, and education, with references from Quran and Hadith, were also carried out to facilitate the discussion of the above mentioned scopes. Conclusion: This paper concludes that there is an emerging trend for the studies of hearing and Islam in the literature. Facilitating hearing impaired people in understanding and practicing Islam becomes a shared obligation for parents, society, and the patients themselves. This discussion also identifies that there is a need for more contributions from Muslim scholars in integrating and implementing the Islamic principles in current hearing care practices.

Institut Teknologi Adhi Tama Surabaya (ITATS) is an institute that has relatively wide territory and complicated building arrangement for outsiders especially related to identification of buildings that they want to visit. To overcome this problem, an android based application that can be used to gain information related to those buildings, locations of places or important places in real-time is required. Augmented Reality (AR) is the appropriate technology to display environment and locations information at ITATS in real-time. The implementation of Augmented Reality technology on android based smartphones using Speeded Up Robust Features (SURF) can identify pictures continuously and has proper identification speed. Speeded Up Robust Features (SURF) is an algorithm that has been commonly applied in correspondence matching because it is faster than Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) and has appropriate and accurate performance maintenance. In designing this application, there are three main stages that should be considered, namely: initialization, tracking marker, and object rendering. Initialization is the stage where images that becomes the database is preliminary processed with Speeded Up Robust Features (SURF) algorithm and  the preparation of the displayed information on the users’ smartphones. The second is tracking marker, smartphone camera takes pictures continuously while processing every inputted image applying Speeded Up Robust Features (SURF) and conducting matching process of images in the database. The final stage, after a match is found, this application displays the text information which corresponds with the matching result. The reliability of this system in recognizing locations at ITATS is 81.66% and average time required is 2.333 seconds.

Introduction: The Cervical Vestibular Evoked Myogenic Potential (cVEMP) is used to evaluate the integrity of saccule and inferior vestibular nerve. There are a lot of factors affecting cVEMP results including stimulus types. This study was carried out to determine the effects of different stimuli on cVEMP results and its test-retest reliability. Materials and method: 25 normal hearing subjects were recruited. The cVEMP testing were performed in 2 sessions with 1 week gap between each sessions. The cVEMP waveforms were recorded in sitting upright position with electrodes placed at; i) upper one-third of sternocleidomastoid muscle for active electrode, ii) suprasternal notch for inactive electrode and, iii) middle of forehead for the ground electrode. The stimuli (500Hz tone burst, click, narrowband chirp and broadband chirp) were presented via insert phone at 95dBnHL. The cVEMP results (P13-N23 peak-to-peak amplitude, P13 latency and N23 latency) were recorded. Results: Result showed; i) 500Hz tone burst produced significantly largest amplitude; ii) narrowband chirp produced significantly shortest P13 latency; iii) broadband chirp produced significantly shortest N23 latency; iv) no significant difference of P13 and N23 latency were observed between two sessions; and v) significant difference of P13-N23 amplitude were observed between two sessions for all stimuli except for narrowband chirp. Conclusion: The 500Hz tone burst was observed to be the most ideal stimulus (produce highest amplitude). All stimuli produced good test-retest reliability in terms of latency. However, most of the stimuli produced poor test-retest reliability in terms of amplitude except for narrowband chirps.