Once you have learned that you are suffering from a hearing loss, you are faced with several questions and problems. What Hearing loss solutions are out there, are there a good hearing loss treatment and last but not least you want to know about causes of hearing loss.
Hearing loss can have many causes and several manifestations. The most common cause is simply aging. Most people who have a hearing loss in there 50, 60 and above don't really need to look to far to find the cause. Human hearing develops from before birth until we are about 20 years of age, after that it gradually decreases in efficiency.
Now there are to parts to distinguish when talking about hearing, the hearing with the ear (hearing) and the hearing between the ears (comprehension). Our ears (hearing organ) perceives sound pressure differences which it converts to electrical impulses which auditory centres in the brain finally decipher as hearing.
How it normally works is like this. A sound wave of a certain frequency hits the eardrum which starts to vibrate and transfers these vibrations over the middle ear to the liquid in the inner ear (Cochlear). Inside the Cochlear there are thousands of tiny cells and if stimulated they create an electrical stimulation which is sent than via the hearing nerve to the brain, where it's deciphered as hearing.
Hearing problems related to a malfunction of the transfer of vibrations to the cochlear are called Conductive hearing problems and are largely remedied today by surgical means. Due to aging and/or noise exposure gradually some of the cells inside the cochlear malfunction and cant convert the mechanical stimulation into electrical impulses. This phenomenon is called Sensory Hearing loss.
Whereas the process of converting acoustical signals to vibration and to electrical stimulation is an automatic process, our ability to decipher these stimuli have been learned over time and need continuous training to maintain. Having problems here is called Neural Hearing loss or also central auditory processing deficiency (CAPD).
CAPD can be a disease by itself but very often it's the result of a sensory hearing loss depriving the auditory brain centres of adequate sensory input and as a result one gradually loses the ability to deciphercomplex auditory signals like speech especially speech in noise. Most often in age one suffers of a combination of sensory and neural hearing loss, Sensor-neural-hearing loss (SNHL). The best hearing solution strongly depends if one suffers from a purely sensory impairment or a SNHL.
Sophisticated hearing aids today have the ability not only to appropriately amplify sounds to offer hearing loss treatment for sensory hearing loss. They also can reduce background noise and help users focus on the most important sound source and thus make it easier to understand speech even in the face of a neural hearing loss or CAPD component. Another hearing loss treatment for neural hearing loss or CAPD is hearing training, whereas the client specifically and independently of sensory function of the cochlear train the central auditory centres of the brain.
Hearing loss can have many causes and several manifestations. The most common cause is simply aging. Most people who have a hearing loss in there 50, 60 and above don't really need to look to far to find the cause. Human hearing develops from before birth until we are about 20 years of age, after that it gradually decreases in efficiency.
Now there are to parts to distinguish when talking about hearing, the hearing with the ear (hearing) and the hearing between the ears (comprehension). Our ears (hearing organ) perceives sound pressure differences which it converts to electrical impulses which auditory centres in the brain finally decipher as hearing.
How it normally works is like this. A sound wave of a certain frequency hits the eardrum which starts to vibrate and transfers these vibrations over the middle ear to the liquid in the inner ear (Cochlear). Inside the Cochlear there are thousands of tiny cells and if stimulated they create an electrical stimulation which is sent than via the hearing nerve to the brain, where it's deciphered as hearing.
Hearing problems related to a malfunction of the transfer of vibrations to the cochlear are called Conductive hearing problems and are largely remedied today by surgical means. Due to aging and/or noise exposure gradually some of the cells inside the cochlear malfunction and cant convert the mechanical stimulation into electrical impulses. This phenomenon is called Sensory Hearing loss.
Whereas the process of converting acoustical signals to vibration and to electrical stimulation is an automatic process, our ability to decipher these stimuli have been learned over time and need continuous training to maintain. Having problems here is called Neural Hearing loss or also central auditory processing deficiency (CAPD).
CAPD can be a disease by itself but very often it's the result of a sensory hearing loss depriving the auditory brain centres of adequate sensory input and as a result one gradually loses the ability to deciphercomplex auditory signals like speech especially speech in noise. Most often in age one suffers of a combination of sensory and neural hearing loss, Sensor-neural-hearing loss (SNHL). The best hearing solution strongly depends if one suffers from a purely sensory impairment or a SNHL.
Sophisticated hearing aids today have the ability not only to appropriately amplify sounds to offer hearing loss treatment for sensory hearing loss. They also can reduce background noise and help users focus on the most important sound source and thus make it easier to understand speech even in the face of a neural hearing loss or CAPD component. Another hearing loss treatment for neural hearing loss or CAPD is hearing training, whereas the client specifically and independently of sensory function of the cochlear train the central auditory centres of the brain.