Seeing Sound

Hearing loss among older adults is linked to an increased risk of dementia, depression and numerous other complications.

Traditional hearing tests, however, aren’t always accessible or convenient. And for individuals experiencing cognitive decline, they may not even be accurate, as patients may not properly understand the instructions they receive.

A new test developed by UB spinout company Auspex Medix taps into something unexpected to eliminate these challenges. By measuring how a person’s pupils involuntarily change size in response to sound from a smartphone, the low-cost, AI-powered tool allows older adults to screen hearing right from their home to determine if they need additional care.

Neuroscientists, psychologists and other researchers have studied how pupils respond to sound—sometimes referred to as pupillary light reflex or auditory pupil response—for decades. But this is the first time, the inventors believe, that it has been used as a potential biomarker for hearing loss.

The test combines a smartphone with a customized clip-on pupillometer that measures the user’s pupils as a series of sounds play from an app. That data is then fed into software on the smartphone, including deep learning algorithms, to be analyzed.

Auspex Medix, founded in 2024, was recently awarded a $252,550 grant from the National Institute on Aging to advance the technology.

Auspex Medix founder Wenyao Xu, professor of computer science and engineering, and co-principal investigator Wei Sun, associate professor in the Department of Communicative Disorders and Sciences, are partnering with researchers from Dent Neurologic Institute to enroll older adults from Western New York, including participants with mild cognitive impairment or mild Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, to evaluate the test.

Xu plans to improve the test’s robustness, lower its cost and make it more user friendly—all key drivers toward commercializing the invention.

“If we can catch hearing loss early, we have a better chance at addressing and potentially slowing cognitive decline and a host of other issues, such as social isolation, depression, increased fall risk, and Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias,” Xu said.