THAI-VAN Hung

Open request - 2020

Institut de l'Audition - 2019

2020 open request

Project status: active

Development of a serious game to stabilize the gaze in children with hearing loss and associated vestibular disorders.

At Lyon University Hospital, Prof. Hung Thai-Van's team is leading a project to develop a serious game aimed at facilitating gaze stabilization in children with hearing loss that also suffer from vestibular disorders. The game should help improve their balance and motor functions as a prerequisite for harmonious motor and cognitive development.

Some 50-70% of children with hearing loss also have vestibular disorders, indicating an impairment of the vestibular system, the organ of balance. Located in the inner ear, the vestibular system maintains the axis of the body and stabilizes the gaze during head movements thanks to the vestibulo-ocular reflex. “Vestibular disorders cause dizziness, balance disorders and oscillopsia, a perception that everything is shifting around patients when they move because their visual cues are unstable,” explains Prof. Hung Thai-Van, Head of the Audiology and Otoneurological Explorations Department at the Femme-Mère-Enfant hospital /Édouard Herriot hospital in Lyon. “This condition has major repercussions on young children’s motor skill acquisition and cognitive development due to learning difficulties.” Rehabilitation for hearing loss, detected at birth, takes place during the first years of life. But early treatment of vestibular disorders is also essential to guarantee the best possible development for these children.

"We are grateful to Fondation Pour l'Audition. With its help, we can innovate by developing a prototype of a serious game to benefit children with hearing loss suffering from vestibular disorders.”Playing, a serious occupation for rehabilitation

“Vestibular rehabilitation has proven effective in adults,” says Professor Thai-Van. This includes classic balance control exercises, as well as specific adaptation and substitution exercises for the vestibulo-ocular reflex. It starts with the physiotherapist, then is continued at home in several sessions per week. “With children, the main difficulty is concentration and motivation to continue the exercises alone. That’s why José Ortega and Cécile Bécaud (pediatric vestibular physiotherapists), Drs. Eugen Ionescu and Pierre Reynard (otoneurologists) and I had the idea of proposing a fun rehabilitation by video game – a concept that has already proven its worth in healthcare. The ‘serious game’ we’ve imagined aims to stabilize the gaze during head movements.” In partnership with a specialized company, the team proposes to develop a prototype and test its benefits for six weeks on 30 children aged 4 to 13 followed-up in Prof. Thai-Van's department. The objective is to help children exercise on their own to improve their postural control and catch up with their motor skills.

Professor Hung Thai-Van
University professor and hospital practitioner
Head of the Audiology and Otoneurology Department at the Femme-Mère-Enfant hospital/Édouard Herriot hospital, Lyon, France
Head of the Expert Center for Hearing and Balance in Children (CEAE), Lyon, France
President of the French Society of Audiology, and General-Secretary of the International Bureau for Audiophonology, France

2019 Institut de l'Audition

Project status: active

The treatment of sensorineural hearing loss will soon benefit from true molecular and cellular therapies. It will also include “intelligent” hearing devices with cutting-edge methods to process signals.

Two key points to validate these new therapies will be examined by the “Clinical and translational exploration of auditory synaptopathies” team led by Didier Dulon and Hung Thai Van:

  1. The first is a precise diagnosis of the molecular mechanisms responsible for hearing loss.
  2. The second consists in establishing the factors that determine individual performance, based on the fine
    phenotype of each subject. 

Professor Hung Thai-Van
Institut de l’Audition, Paris, France

Related scientific publication(s):