Throughout my research on the topic of hearing loss, it has come to my attention that the audience that most hearing aid companies and hearing assistance individuals focus their products and support on the elderly when the elderly are the least likely audience to pursue hearing help and are the audience who will benefit the least from the products and support. Why do people direct their focus primarily on the elderly when there are millions of children with hearing loss who would benefit far more from hearing help than older individuals would? Of course the elderly should get the support they need in order to hear better, but studies have shown that the greatest impact hearing technology and support can have on a person happens during childhood. When the brain is still developing and neurons are still forming pathways the brain is better able to undo any harm hearing loss has had on a child. Speech issues such as vocabulary and pronunciation are the most susceptible to damage by hearing loss at a young age and hearing aids and other technology are the most promising solution to combat these issues. Many parents and young adults do not know much about hearing loss and could really benefit from more outreach by hearing support individuals and companies. There is a stigma surrounding hearing loss, and any other disability really, that creates this image that having a disability like hearing loss is a bad thing and that if you have it you should hide it. People think that if you have a disability it means you won't be as successful as peers who do not have a disability and therefore there is less of a push for hearing technology for younger generations. Teenagers and young adults would rather pretend that their hearing loss doesn't exist than wearing hearing aids.
Deaf culture can also have a big impact on hearing loss and how people view people who have it. A major argument that has been going on and continues to go on today is the idea of whether or not deaf people should learn how to speak. Some people argue that it is a necessity to be successful in the world as most people don't sign while others argue that a person shouldn't be forced to learn to speak just because it would make other peoples' lives easier. Those who are opposed to deaf people learning to speak are often not very supportive of technologies like hearing aids as well.
We as a society need to stop viewing peoples' differences, such as hearing loss, blindness, autism, etc, as an excuse to write them off as a failure before they even get a change to prove us wrong and start realizing that 'disabilities' aren't all that disabling.
Thursday, April 6, 2017
Monday, March 6, 2017
Interview
I interviewed my audiologist for this project because she works closely with individuals with hearing loss and hearing aid technology.
1) Where are you from/Where did you grow up?
I am originally from Bay City, Michigan, which is where I grew up.
2) Do you think that had any impact on what career you chose?
I do not believe that growing up there had an influence on my career path.
3) How did you decide that you wanted to become an audiologist?
I decided to pursue Audiology coursework when my academic advisor told me the Intro to Audiology course would be "too hard for me" and discouraged me from taking it. But my personality is a "little" stubborn and I took it anyway. Who was he to tell me something was "too hard for me"! After that course I was hooked on Audiology!
Side note: Don't ever let someone who doesn't believe in you keep you from doing something!
4) What is your favorite part about your job?
I love working with people and hearing their life stories! I also like getting the opportunity to improve quality of life for my patient's on a daily basis!
5) What is your least favorite part about your job?
The paperwork, of course.
6) What is one piece of advice that you would give your patients that you think is really important?
That it is important to make people aware of the difference in their hearing and how important it is to the patient that they be able to communicate with people in their lives. I always encourage my patients to advocate for themselves in a way that helps others to understand that what they say matters to the patient because they care and want to hear it!
7) Any specific experiences that you have had while working with a patient and/or a patients family that has really stuck with you?
There are so many it is hard to think of one to talk about here! I guess the one that really stands out is about one little girl who we identified with hearing loss at around 6 months but her ENT said that she had one normal hearing ear and she didn't need a hearing aid for the ear with hearing loss (which is not the best practice for pediatric audiology – unilateral hearing loss can cause speech delays and academic struggles so hearing aid should be fit). She returned to our office at 4 years of age and was re-tested and the hearing was determined to now be bilateral and progressive. She was fit with hearing aids and LOVED her hearing aids and did so well! She began to show great progress in speech/language therapy sessions and at school. As the hearing loss progressed, we added an FM system for home and school. However, the hearing loss continued to progress to the point where she was not really benefiting from hearing aids as much as initially noted and her auditory performance declined. She will have cochlear implant surgery on the right ear later this month. If she had been initially fit with a hearing aid on the right ear, speech language skills might not be as delayed as they are and we certainly would have picked up on the left hearing loss a lot earlier. Thank goodness for her mother's intuition that something was not right.
8) How much does wearing hearing aids affect a person with hearing loss in an environment with bad acoustics?
Hearing aid technology has improved tremendously. We always have to remember that we are comparing performance with hearing aids in the ear to performance without hearing aids on an ear with hearing loss, not performance with hearing aids to performance of someone with normal hearing in noise or how they performed before hearing loss. For the great majority of my patients, hearing aids provided audibility necessary to understand speech (in quiet or in noise). Without the hearing aids, the speech sounds are not audible and speech will not be clear. As with normal hearing individuals, is will never be as easy to hear in noise as it is in quiet. But with that said, hearing aid technology is handling adverse listening environments better than ever!
9) Anything that I have forgot to ask that you want to add?
I don't think so!
Wednesday, February 22, 2017
Life Update!
About a few months ago, I lost my hearing aids. Because of this, I have had a lot harder of a time in class and have struggled to hear even more than usual. My parents were extremely upset that they were lost because they cost $3,000 each. My family's insurance covers my hearing aid costs, but only every 4 years. What this means is that I am only allowed to get new hearing aids every 4 years, otherwise my parents have to pay the full amount. Luckily for me, 4 years would have been January of 2017 so therefore, I was eligible to receive new hearings aids this January. Both Widex and Phonak, two top hearing aid manufacturers, just came out with a newly designed hearing aid and now I am in the process of trying them both out. Originally, hearing aid technology could only go so far. The technology of hearing aids was not advanced enough to let your brain decide that was important to hear and what was not important to hear. Hearing aids focused on whatever was directly in front of you, using a directional microphone, and deemed any other noise as background noise, focusing the microphone away from those noises. This was very problematic. In the real world, everyone speaking to you won't be directly in front of your face, and sometimes in classroom settings and meetings, teachers or speakers walk around the room and therefore are not in front of the hearing impaired student at all times. While hearing aid companies recognized this as a problem, the technologies available to them were not able to fix this issue. These new hearing aids, however, have the latest technology and have fixed the problem that hearing aids were facing. This new technology has a 360 degree microphone allowing the hearing aid to pick up all sounds and send them to the brain to be processed. This is revolutionary because up until this point, a little machine inside the hearing aid was deciding what was important and should be focused on, not the people themselves. The new microphone technology allows this and now instead of feeling isolated and forced to listen to only what is in front of me, I get to choose what I feel is worth listening to and my brain gets to perform activities it has never done before. Right now, I am wearing the Phonak hearing aids and in the next few weeks I will be switching to Widex hearing aids to compare the two. Stay tuned for more information regarding the new hearing aids and I am very excited to continue sharing my comparisons and new experiences with the new technology!
Monday, December 19, 2016
How do I intend to help improve my school's acoustics to better enable learning in the classroom? Good question! Something that I have noticed during my 4 years here is the terrible acoustics that seem to be in almost every classroom in the school. In Slocum and Weaver, the high ceilings cause quite a problem while in Hunter, the cementer floor, walls and ceilings in every classroom cause the noise disruption.
Concrete is a great material to use when the goal is to keep sound inside one room, however because it is a thick, hard surface, it reflects sound back in the direction it came from; this causes reverberation. While it is known that two hard, flat walls can cause a lot of reverberation, there is not much that can be done because almost all rooms are shaped in that way. However, the material used can really improve the acoustics of a space.
Emma Willard has already taken steps to improve the acoustics in classrooms. Rugs, or any soft, fluffy material, is great at absorbing sound. Instead of reflecting sound back into the room, rugs absorb the sound which decreases the amount of echo in a space. Most of Emma Willard School's classrooms have rugs to counteract the high ceilings and the echo effect that these high ceilings create. While this is a step in the right direction, it still is not enough. The rugs in most of the classrooms now are old and worn, making them flat and hard on the ground. When rugs become worn out, their sound absorbing qualities drastically decrease so in order for a rug to be an effective echo decreasing material, it cannot be thin and hard like the ones in the classrooms now.
In the next few months, I will be studying the effects that different materials have on the level of reverberation in a space. I will be studying how to improve current classrooms by adding materials and what materials work best for the job of eliminating echo and improving overall acoustics. Check back in the coming months for updates on my research!
Concrete is a great material to use when the goal is to keep sound inside one room, however because it is a thick, hard surface, it reflects sound back in the direction it came from; this causes reverberation. While it is known that two hard, flat walls can cause a lot of reverberation, there is not much that can be done because almost all rooms are shaped in that way. However, the material used can really improve the acoustics of a space.
Emma Willard has already taken steps to improve the acoustics in classrooms. Rugs, or any soft, fluffy material, is great at absorbing sound. Instead of reflecting sound back into the room, rugs absorb the sound which decreases the amount of echo in a space. Most of Emma Willard School's classrooms have rugs to counteract the high ceilings and the echo effect that these high ceilings create. While this is a step in the right direction, it still is not enough. The rugs in most of the classrooms now are old and worn, making them flat and hard on the ground. When rugs become worn out, their sound absorbing qualities drastically decrease so in order for a rug to be an effective echo decreasing material, it cannot be thin and hard like the ones in the classrooms now.
In the next few months, I will be studying the effects that different materials have on the level of reverberation in a space. I will be studying how to improve current classrooms by adding materials and what materials work best for the job of eliminating echo and improving overall acoustics. Check back in the coming months for updates on my research!
Thursday, December 8, 2016
Something that is extremely new and not very well known is the hearing aid technology that Apple has created. Apple, arguably the largest tech company in the world, has been working on making their products more accessible for everyone, including the disabled. They have specific features for the visually impaired, hearing impaired, those with physical and motor impairments, and those with learning and literacy impairments. Apple has worked with top manufacturers to create hearing aids that are designed specifically for apple products. The goal is to make using your phone or other apple device as easy as possible, no matter who you are. The hearing aids have Bluetooth capability, as do many new hearing aids now, and can be controlled directly from your iPhone, iPad, or apple watch. This makes adjusting hearing aids a lot easier as one hearing aid setting does not fit all noise levels and backgrounds.
There are also many new apps that you can buy in the app store that were created for those with hearing loss. Some new apps allow a person to use the phone microphone that you speak into while talking on the phone as a microphone that feeds the sounds directly into the users hearing aids. This is similar to an FM system(which I wrote about in a previous post) except the main difference is that this app makes group conversations even easier. There is no speaker set that needs to be passed from person to person in order for the hearing impaired person to follow conversation. This app lets users put their phone down in the middle of the table and the microphone picks up the conversation and feeds it directly to the ears of the person with hearing loss. There are other apps that also translate sound into words and act as a captioning device for those with hearing problems. Today’s technology is making the world far more accessible to those with disabilities and it is really opening up new doors and creating connections between people that were not there or would not have occurred before.
There are also many new apps that you can buy in the app store that were created for those with hearing loss. Some new apps allow a person to use the phone microphone that you speak into while talking on the phone as a microphone that feeds the sounds directly into the users hearing aids. This is similar to an FM system(which I wrote about in a previous post) except the main difference is that this app makes group conversations even easier. There is no speaker set that needs to be passed from person to person in order for the hearing impaired person to follow conversation. This app lets users put their phone down in the middle of the table and the microphone picks up the conversation and feeds it directly to the ears of the person with hearing loss. There are other apps that also translate sound into words and act as a captioning device for those with hearing problems. Today’s technology is making the world far more accessible to those with disabilities and it is really opening up new doors and creating connections between people that were not there or would not have occurred before.
Thursday, December 1, 2016
Hearing loss can have infinite implications on a person’s life. The first hearing aid was not invented until 1898 and hearing aids were not accessible to the general public until the late 20th century. Since 1898, our technological advancements in hearing aid options have overwhelmingly increased. Today there are multiple options for hearing aids, some can go behind your ear and loop into the ear canal while others go directly into the ear canal and are virtually invisible. The average cost per hearing aid is $4,600 and not all insurance companies cover hearing aid costs; my parents’ insurance did not and they had to change to an insurance company that would cover hearing aid expenses but still, our insurance does not cover the entire cost and my parents have to pay a portion of the price out of pocket. This is concerning as many people who need hearing aids are unable to afford them and therefore, miss huge parts of life just because they are unable to hear.
Besides the obvious assistive technology for hearing, hearing aids, there are an abundance of other options to help people hear. Hearing assistive technology such as audio loops (or hearing loop), FM, and infrared systems are options that can work with or without hearing aids.
• The audio or hearing loop is a wire that circles a room and is connected to the sound system. The loop transmits the sound electromagnetically and the signal is then picked up by the telecoil in the hearing aid. It is easy as pressing a button on the hearing aid to start picking up the signal and there is no additional equipment needed.
• An infrared system uses invisible light beams to carry sound from the source to a personal receiver. (The sound source must be in the line of sight.) Different types of attachments may be connected to the personal receiver such as a neckloop or a behind-the-ear silhouette inductor. The telecoil then picks up sound from the receiver via the attachment. I own a neckloop and while it is nice to be able to stream music directly into my ears without taking off my hearing aids, the neckloop is not the most reliable connection wise and must be extremely close to my hearing aids, not making it one of my favorite devices to wear.
• An FM system works similarly, but sound is conveyed though radio waves to a personal receiver. I used an FM system all through my elementary and middle school years and have some hilarious stories to tell. Some of my teachers loved it, saying they felt like a rock star wearing the microphone that made sure I heard everything they were saying in the classroom, while others hated it and thought of it as a nuisance to wear with all its wires. Either way, most of my teachers forgot they were wearing it at least once. I have heard everything from a teacher going to the bathroom to two teachers talking badly about another teacher in the teacher lounge. An FM system is not perfect and I have even received radio waves from construction workers across the road, meaning instead of hearing my teacher talking about the lesson, I was listening to questions about how to place the beam onto the platform in the right way as not to damage the foundation.
These devices help people to hear and understand better in many situations where acoustics are poor, background noise is bothersome, and there is a long distance from the speaker however none of them can replace perfectly working ears.
For people with severe to profound hearing loss, surgery can also be an option. Hearing loss caused by congenital absence of ear canal or failure of the ear canal to be open at birth, congenital absence, malformation, or dysfunction of the middle ear structures, may all possibly be surgically corrected.
A surgery to resolve hearing loss usually involves inserting a cochlear implant. A cochlear implant is a small, complex electronic device that can help to provide a sense of sound to a person who is profoundly deaf or severely hard-of-hearing. The implant consists of an external portion that sits behind the ear and a second portion that is surgically placed under the skin (see picture).
The implant works in the following way:
First, a microphone picks up sound from the environment and then a speech processor selects and arranges sounds picked up by the microphone. A transmitter and receiver/stimulator receive signals from the speech processor and convert them into electric impulses. An electrode array, which is a group of electrodes that collects the impulses from the stimulator, then sends them to different regions of the auditory nerve creating artificial hearing.
Looking to the future, there may come a time where hearing loss is completely cured and anyone who has hearing loss can have their hearing restored to a normal, hearing level. Scientists are working with stem cells to figure out a way to make that happen. They are also researching animals, specifically zebra fish and chickens, because these animals have the ability to regenerate the tiny hairs in the ear that make hearing possible. Scientists want to know how these animals can do that and find a way to replicate the process in humans.
Besides the obvious assistive technology for hearing, hearing aids, there are an abundance of other options to help people hear. Hearing assistive technology such as audio loops (or hearing loop), FM, and infrared systems are options that can work with or without hearing aids.
• The audio or hearing loop is a wire that circles a room and is connected to the sound system. The loop transmits the sound electromagnetically and the signal is then picked up by the telecoil in the hearing aid. It is easy as pressing a button on the hearing aid to start picking up the signal and there is no additional equipment needed.
• An infrared system uses invisible light beams to carry sound from the source to a personal receiver. (The sound source must be in the line of sight.) Different types of attachments may be connected to the personal receiver such as a neckloop or a behind-the-ear silhouette inductor. The telecoil then picks up sound from the receiver via the attachment. I own a neckloop and while it is nice to be able to stream music directly into my ears without taking off my hearing aids, the neckloop is not the most reliable connection wise and must be extremely close to my hearing aids, not making it one of my favorite devices to wear.
• An FM system works similarly, but sound is conveyed though radio waves to a personal receiver. I used an FM system all through my elementary and middle school years and have some hilarious stories to tell. Some of my teachers loved it, saying they felt like a rock star wearing the microphone that made sure I heard everything they were saying in the classroom, while others hated it and thought of it as a nuisance to wear with all its wires. Either way, most of my teachers forgot they were wearing it at least once. I have heard everything from a teacher going to the bathroom to two teachers talking badly about another teacher in the teacher lounge. An FM system is not perfect and I have even received radio waves from construction workers across the road, meaning instead of hearing my teacher talking about the lesson, I was listening to questions about how to place the beam onto the platform in the right way as not to damage the foundation.
These devices help people to hear and understand better in many situations where acoustics are poor, background noise is bothersome, and there is a long distance from the speaker however none of them can replace perfectly working ears.
For people with severe to profound hearing loss, surgery can also be an option. Hearing loss caused by congenital absence of ear canal or failure of the ear canal to be open at birth, congenital absence, malformation, or dysfunction of the middle ear structures, may all possibly be surgically corrected.
A surgery to resolve hearing loss usually involves inserting a cochlear implant. A cochlear implant is a small, complex electronic device that can help to provide a sense of sound to a person who is profoundly deaf or severely hard-of-hearing. The implant consists of an external portion that sits behind the ear and a second portion that is surgically placed under the skin (see picture).
The implant works in the following way:
First, a microphone picks up sound from the environment and then a speech processor selects and arranges sounds picked up by the microphone. A transmitter and receiver/stimulator receive signals from the speech processor and convert them into electric impulses. An electrode array, which is a group of electrodes that collects the impulses from the stimulator, then sends them to different regions of the auditory nerve creating artificial hearing.
Looking to the future, there may come a time where hearing loss is completely cured and anyone who has hearing loss can have their hearing restored to a normal, hearing level. Scientists are working with stem cells to figure out a way to make that happen. They are also researching animals, specifically zebra fish and chickens, because these animals have the ability to regenerate the tiny hairs in the ear that make hearing possible. Scientists want to know how these animals can do that and find a way to replicate the process in humans.
Tuesday, November 29, 2016
Hearing loss is known for having a genetic component. Two specific genes known for being related to loss of hearing are the GJB2 and GJB6 genes although mutations in at least 30 genes have been identified. The scientific name for the most common form of hearing loss is nonsyndromic hearing loss. Nonsyndromic hearing loss means that there are no other symptoms or signs associated with the hearing loss. Nonsyndromic hearing loss can be inherited in an autosomal dominant pattern; the mutation that causes the hearing loss is on a dominant non-sex chromosome so a person only needs one mutated gene to be affected by the alteration.
Hearing is measured in decibels (dB). The threshold or 0 dB mark for each frequency refers to the level at which normal young adults perceive a tone burst 50% of the time. Hearing is considered normal if an individual's thresholds are within 15 dB of normal thresholds. The chart down below demonstrations the severity of the hearing loss by showing how many decibels away from the threshold the hearing loss is.
The type of hearing loss that I have been diagnosed with is called familial nonsyndromal Mondini dysplasia. Mondini dysplasia is a type of inner ear malformation that is present at birth. Individuals with Mondini dysplasia have one and a half coils of the cochlea instead of the normal two and a half coils. The cochlea receives sound in the form of vibrations, which cause the stereocilia(tiny hairs inside the cochlea) to move. The stereocilia then convert these vibrations into nerve impulses, which are taken up to the brain to be interpreted. With less turns of the cochlea, there are less stereocilia to send signals to the brain about sound, therefore causing hearling loss. Mondini dysplasia may occur in one ear (unilateral) or both ears (bilateral) and can cause varying degrees of sensorineural hearing loss, although most individuals have profound hearing loss. My particular case of Mondini dysplasia is bilateral however I have mild to moderate hearing loss, not profound hearing loss like the majority of those with this abnormality.
Hearing is measured in decibels (dB). The threshold or 0 dB mark for each frequency refers to the level at which normal young adults perceive a tone burst 50% of the time. Hearing is considered normal if an individual's thresholds are within 15 dB of normal thresholds. The chart down below demonstrations the severity of the hearing loss by showing how many decibels away from the threshold the hearing loss is.
Severity
of Hearing Loss in Decibels (dB)
|
Severity
|
Hearing
Threshold in Decibels
|
|
Mild
|
26-40
dB
|
|
Moderate
|
41-55
dB
|
|
Moderately
severe
|
56-70
dB
|
|
Severe
|
71-90
dB
|
|
Profound
|
90
dB
|
The type of hearing loss that I have been diagnosed with is called familial nonsyndromal Mondini dysplasia. Mondini dysplasia is a type of inner ear malformation that is present at birth. Individuals with Mondini dysplasia have one and a half coils of the cochlea instead of the normal two and a half coils. The cochlea receives sound in the form of vibrations, which cause the stereocilia(tiny hairs inside the cochlea) to move. The stereocilia then convert these vibrations into nerve impulses, which are taken up to the brain to be interpreted. With less turns of the cochlea, there are less stereocilia to send signals to the brain about sound, therefore causing hearling loss. Mondini dysplasia may occur in one ear (unilateral) or both ears (bilateral) and can cause varying degrees of sensorineural hearing loss, although most individuals have profound hearing loss. My particular case of Mondini dysplasia is bilateral however I have mild to moderate hearing loss, not profound hearing loss like the majority of those with this abnormality.
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