This month we are hosting a special Power of Light Hearing Event at Shohet Ear Associates that will feature the new customized Earlens technology that harnesses the power of light to help you hear more naturally. Because the Earlens Hearing Aid uses light instead of a speaker to gently activate the ear’s natural hearing system, it can overcome limitations of speaker-based technology. It can amplify a much broader range of sound, including high frequencies that conventional hearing aids cannot amplify enough to become audible. This is significant because most hearing loss affects the higher frequency of hearing more than the lower frequencies.
There are many benefits of broader frequency range hearing including improved sound localization, speech understanding, naturalness of sound and music appreciation.
SOUND LOCALIZATION
Sound location, or our ability to tell which direction sounds are coming from, may seem like it has limited uses (for instance, knowing which way a car is coming from while crossing a street), but we actually use sound localization for much more.
Our ears are naturally designed to help with sound localization. The outer ear, or pinna, is shaped like a cup and faces forward. This helps us to hear things that are in front of us better than things that are behind us. Meanwhile, because we have two ears, one on each side of our head, we hear sounds around us slightly differently in each ear.
When we have normal hearing, our brain can use those differences in sound information to determine where sounds are coming from. For instance, because it knows that the right ear heard a sound louder than the left ear did, or because a sound coming from the right side is heard in the right ear before it is heard in the left. This is important because when we have normal hearing, our brain’s ability to determine the direction of sounds enables us to focus in on what we want to hear, and subconsciously suppress background noise. We also have access to more frequencies that help us identify the direction of sounds to effortlessly listen to what we’re interested in hearing.
SPEECH UNDERSTANDING
Hearing and understanding sound are different issues for most people. Oftentimes, people who wear hearing aids will say, “I can hear him, but I can’t understand him.” This challenge is especially pronounced in noisy situations, like a restaurant with clinking glasses and plates, or a bowling alley where sounds reverberate throughout a large space with sound reflecting hard surfaces on the walls, floor and ceiling.
It is often difficult to focus on a specific person’s voice when there are a lot of other noises in the background. When we have normal hearing, our brain can automatically zero in on conversations we want to hear, regardless of whether people are speaking in front of, behind, or next to us. However, this becomes harder when we have hearing loss, in part because of changes in our ability to detect sounds that are close together in frequency and detect softer sounds.
Hearing loss typically occurs first in the high frequencies. Yet, these are the frequencies that make it easier to understand speech, as the high-frequency consonant sounds are the signals that help us to distinguish one word from the next. Sounds in this frequency range also help the brain to more precisely separate sounds in loud situations, which ultimately helps with understanding speech in noisy situations.
An example of this effect is reflected in a 2015 study by Suzanne Levy1 et. al, which found that hearing in the extended high-frequency range improves speech reception thresholds, (the minimum loudness at which a person can understand 50% of spoken words), in situations with multiple people speaking. A significant improvement in speech understanding was observed when study participants were able to hear a broader range of frequencies. Specifically, the improvements occurred after the frequency bandwidth was extended from 4 Hz or 6 Hz up to 10 kHz.
With conventional hearing aids, it is typically difficult to provide meaningful audibility above 5-6 kHz. However, the Earlens Hearing Aid can provide useful amplification all the way out to 10 kHz, even for patients with severe hearing loss. A clinical study found that Earlens improved hearing in noisy environments2, while 84% of study patients reported that Earlens made it easier to carry on conversations in noisy settings.
NATURAL SOUND & MUSIC APPRECIATION
A broader frequency range has been associated with many benefits to the listener, including more natural sound. A study by hearing scientist Dr. Brian Moore of the University of Cambridge, found that speech is perceived as up to 3x more natural with a broader frequency range and that perceived naturalness of music was also higher.*
The relationship between a broader frequency bandwidth and perceived naturalness of sound makes sense because we can hear a wide range of frequencies when we have normal hearing. As we begin to lose our hearing, we start to have trouble hearing various frequencies, usually beginning with higher pitched sounds. Those higher pitches usually give sound naturalness, brightness and clarity, while the low frequencies bring fullness to sound.
If you are interested in learning more about Earlens and “hearing it for yourself,” call us today to make an appointment for our Power of Light Hearing Event taking place May 16-18th at our Seal Beach and Newport Beach offices.
References:
1Levy, S. C., Freed, D. J., Nilsson, M., Moore, B. C., & Puria, S. (2015). Extended High-Frequency Bandwidth Improves Speech Reception in the Presence of Spatially Separated Masking Speech. Ear and Hearing, 36(5). doi:10.1097/aud.0000000000000161
2Improvement over unaided hearing
*Moore, B. C., & Tan, C. (2003). Perceived naturalness of spectrally distorted speech and music. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 114(1), 408. doi:10.1121/1.1577552.
Sources:
https://earlens.com/category/broad-frequency-hearing/
https://earlens.com/benefits-broad-frequency-hearing-better-hearing-noisy-environments/