Friends who can’t hear with hearing aids can go to the otolaryngology department for a check-up-distortion products otoacoustic emission

When our ears have hearing loss, it will not only impair the ability of the ears to amplify sound, that is, “inaudible”, but also accompanied by other important and complex hearing impairments.

One of the most important hearing impairments is to reduce the overall level of neural activity and change the pattern of neural activity in the brain, so that the brain no longer recognizes the changed pattern of neural activity, which is “incomprehensible”

Friends who can’t hear with hearing aids can go to the otolaryngology department for a check-up-distortion products otoacoustic emission, English abbreviation DPOAE, which means that when two frequencies of sound enter the ear simultaneously to stimulate the cochlea, An additional cochlear sound was recorded, and this recorded sound was a complex combination of the original two sounds.

When DPOAE is done, if this extra sound is not detected, it often indicates impaired cochlear function.

This extra sound is released by the cochlea. It not only travels from the cochlea to the external auditory canal, but also causes nerve activity upwards to the brain.

But the work of combining the two sounds with complex sound and releasing extra sound energy, the damaged cochlea “does not work” as before, so it will not cause the original extra nerve activity.

In this way, the neural activity pattern (without additional neural activity) caused by the hearing aid to amplify the sound is different from the neural activity pattern (with additional neural activity) expected by the brain, and the brain does not “recognize” this new model. Of course, it is manifested in poor speech intelligibility (ie, “incomprehensible”).

It’s like: when hearing is normal, the conversation between the ear and the brain is in “Mandarin”.

When hearing loss occurs, to the brain, the ear is not just talking down the volume, but using a brand new “foreign language” to talk to the brain.

Hearing aids can help the ears speak at a higher volume (that is, amplify the sound), but they cannot translate the “foreign language” of the ears into “mandarin.”