Pedro L. Mangabeira Albernaz

For many years the measurement of hearing in small children had been a serious challenge. Hearing is the most important of our sense organs, the basis of language and communication. I used to tell my students in Medical School that we remember learning to read and write, but we do not remember learning to speak, which is much more complicated. Reading and writing is simply a representation of our speech with symbols. Learning to speak is a much more difficult task for our nervous system, a task that starts when we are born. The period of time from two months to 30 months of age is the most intense activity in acquiring language. In the old days most of the hearing tests in young children could only be done by conditioning . There are two types of conditioning, the classical , or pavlovian type, developed by Ivan Pavlov in 1927, and the instrumental type, developed by Edward Thorndike and extensively revised by B. F. Skinner. In Pavlov’s classical experiment the dogs were conditioned ...

Bill House is my guru, my otological model, my friend. Most probably his name will appear many times in this blog. His associate Jim Sheehy used to say that he is a “far out thinker.” His inventive capacity has no limits. He changed otology and neurotology. Making changes in Medicine is a complex thing. Many people resent it. Many people  make unfavorable comments. Many people try to block progress. The history of otology tells us that all new procedures were severely criticized before becoming standardized techniques. I am happy that Bill decided to write a memoir telling us how controversial most of his work was, something that young otologists do not realize. Very aptly, his book is called The Struggles of a Medical Innovator – Cochlear Implants and Other Ear Surgeries. The Table of Contents, in itself, is a list of his accomplishments in the areas of otosclerosis, the facial nerve recess, surgery for Menière’s Disease, the middle fossa and translabyrinthine approaches for ...

Nautilus is the name of several species of marine animals, cephalopod mollusks of the Nautilidae family. These animals originated 65 million years ago and all of its close relatives are now extinct. Fig. 1. The nautilus in its natural habitat (Wikimedia commons). Fig. 1 shows a nautilus in its natural habitat. Fig. 2 is a schematic drawing of its chambers, which can be filled with water when the nautilus wants to move to a greater depth. When it wants to go closer to the surface the water is expelled from the chambers. This is a complicated process that requires the elimination of the sodium from the water in the chambers, accomplished by special enzymes. The osmotic pressure change makes the fluid  flow against the ocean’s hydrostatic pressure. Fig. 2. A schematic drawing showing the chambers that the  nautilus uses to move into different depths. The shell is very hard. At a depth of 400 meters, the usual depth in which the nautilus hunts, the hydrostatic pressure is 10...