Prototype of new hearing aid. (Credit: Image courtesy of Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council)
Posted on 06/13/2011 10:58:23 AM PDT by Red Badger
New software 'hearing dummies' are part of cutting-edge research that promises to revolutionise the diagnosis and treatment of hearing impairments.
The work could also be used in the long-term to develop a radical new type of hearing aid that can be customised using the hearing dummy to meet the different needs of individual patients. If the procedures gain clinical acceptance, a device could reach the market within 4 years.
The research is being carried out by a team at the University of Essex with funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).
The aim has been to enable hearing aids to be carefully calibrated so that they address the particular underlying hearing condition affecting each individual patient; and to ensure that they tackle the most common problem affecting hearing-impaired people -- sound interference, which leads to an inability to follow conversations in noisy environments.
People also differ in how much they are affected by noisy environments, which is why developing a tailor-made approach represents such a significant breakthrough.
"Today's hearing aids don't help to separate sounds -- they just amplify them," says Professor Ray Meddis, of the University's Department of Psychology, who has led the work. "So they often make everything too noisy for the wearer, especially in social situations like parties, and some wearers still can't make out what people are saying to them. They find the whole experience so uncomfortable that they end up taking their hearing aids out! This discourages them from going to social occasions or busy environments and may result in them withdrawing from society."
The first key advance has been the development of unique computer models (or 'hearing dummies') that can use the information collected during the tests to simulate the precise details of an individual patient's hearing.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...
Prototype of new hearing aid. (Credit: Image courtesy of Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council)
Tinnitus ring list!..................
*
And expensive.
I am still waiting for a hearing aid that will recognize what is out of your range and modify it to be in your range. That's software doable, isn't it?
I think that’s what they are trying to achieve................
They do it with cochlear implants.............
A friend of mine just got his hearing aids free from the VA............
My hearing aid does a good job. It’s calibrated via computer. When outside “interference” occurs on a regular basis, I run to my “ear guy” and he calibrates it out. Example: paper crinkling drove me nuts, so he took it out. No more excessive paper noise. A noisy room can be a distraction if it reaches a certain level, but that doesn’t happen too often. I’m very pleased with my little “invisible” hearing device.
I’m unhappy with mine. Sounds I don’t want are too loud. Several adjustments with minimum results. I take them out in groups.
Since my inner ear was removed and the other one is dying, that's not an option, unfortunately.
Do you still have an ear drum?...........
Ya.
Groups of hearing aids? How many ears ya got?
>>Tinnitus ring list!...<<
I have tinnitus, though it doesn’t bother me. One slight annoyance is that when driving my car on a noisy freeway, the road noise and ringing in my ears tend to combine to give a form of distortion on top of conversation or music.
That’ll do it! Mine was steam turbines and standing to close to the speakers at a J. Giels concert. BAM! The first chord was like the opening scene in “Back to the Future”!
If all I had was tinnitus I’d be happy.
I have tinnitus plus hearing impairment. Left ear almost totally deaf. Right ear better, but for how long, I don’t know...............
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.