Hearing: One of the Five Senses
Helen Keller lost her hearing and sight at the age of about 18 months, due to an unknown illness. With the help of Anne Sullivan, she learned to communicate by signing letters into the palm of her hand. She later became the first deaf-blind person to graduate from college with a Bachelor of Arts degree. Helen Keller is quoted as saying, “Blindness separates people from things; deafness separates people from people.” Interestingly, she had overcome her communication difficulty via the modality of touch.
Hearing is a complex process, which allows us to communicate with one another. It allows us to connect with those around us in a purposeful, intellectual way. For people who lose their hearing, they often report initial frustration, followed by withdrawal from social settings, which finally leads to feelings of isolation. It is this isolation, and lack of auditory processing in the brain and subsequent input from the memory center and the thinking and reasoning centers of the brain, which has been cited for contributing to memory loss, dementia, and/or Alzheimer’s disease. Therefore, the upper-level language processing that occurs throughout the brain in response to hearing spoken words is important to our overall cognitive health, as well as our emotional and mental health.
We hear with our brain, not just our ears. Hearing, in and of itself, describes the detection of sound. However, it is the process of making sense out of what we have heard, which allows us to understand others. The longer a hearing loss is present without correction, the more likely we will lose our ability to fill-in missing information and make the correct “guess” regarding what others are saying. Therefore, in order to maintain our understanding, it is important to correct a hearing loss as soon as possible. In that effort, we should all have our hearing tested on an annual basis, in order to monitor any changes in hearing sensitivity or auditory discrimination abilities.
For people with hearing loss, amplification is one option, which may provide correction for the loss of detection of sound. However, it is important for auditory neural integrity to provide consistent stimulation to the auditory nerve fibers in response to sound. This means that the patient should make an effort to use amplification as many waking hours per day as possible, with the exception of times during the day when they are performing activities involving water or excessive sweat or when loud noise exposure is unavoidable — at which time amplification devices should be removed and hearing protection utilized.
In addition to consistent, daily use of amplification, it is important to provide the brain with auditory retraining therapy, in effort to improve auditory resolution abilities, or the auditory processing of linguistic information — that is, our speech understanding. By reading aloud to oneself, 15 minutes/day, while wearing amplification, the person with hearing loss has been shown to improve their auditory discrimination abilities, over simply wearing hearing aids alone. By improving their auditory discrimination abilities, they become more confident in social situations, which may keep them socially engaged, which in turn may help to maintain emotional, mental, and cognitive health.
Many people who have followed this advice have reported feeling more “alive.” It is no wonder, that hearing the voices of our friends and loved ones connects us socially to one another. If you or someone you love is showing signs of difficulty understanding, don’t wait for things to get worse — the professionals at Better Hearing and Balance Connection are available to check your current hearing and discrimination abilities and provide you with the tools for better hearing. Dr. Gretchen Magee, Au.D. and Dr. Shawn Key, Au.D. have two locations to better serve you. They are located at 407 Town Center East in Bella Vista, Ark., and at 906 NW 8th Street in Bentonville. Call (479) 657-6464 today to reserve an appointment at either location. At Better Hearing and Balance Connection, we listen, so you can hear!