We have recently established central auditory difficulties as a common feature of NF1. The severity of these difficulties was significant enough to cause impairing disruptions to children’s everyday communication abilities and academic progress. This talk will briefly review the evidence for these difficulties and introduce the TAPiN trial, which is a four-week randomised crossover study followed by a controlled 30-week extension, which was recently funded by the Medical Research Future Fund. 

Study outcomes are clinically meaningful and include measures of speech perception, literacy skills, attention, fatigue, social function, and quality of life. Recruitment for this study has recently commenced at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and The Children’s Hospital at Westmead. This study is expected to provide evidence for a novel, non-invasive intervention targeting a common and impairing problem in NF1.