11–20 of 98 posts
My wife has premature hearing loss of an unknown cause. Doctor kind of shrugged when asked what could be done about it. This was some 15 years ago. I'll push her to make an appointment with a doc again to see if something new has been discovered.
wait another 15 years, sorry: this is very early-stage work.
My wife has premature hearing loss of an unknown cause. Doctor kind of shrugged when asked what could be done about it. This was some 15 years ago. I'll push her to make an appointment with a doc again to see if something new has been discovered.
YMMV but it might be something useful to try with your wife.
I was hoping to read that it might also help people like myself who suffer from tinnitus. Sadly, no. Still, if it can restore hearing to the deaf, this is a good thing.
If tinnitus is a maladaptive neuroplasticity (your brain "needs" to hear something so if it can't because you're deaf at that frequency it'll invent things for you to hear instead) that makes sense to model as some stable limit cycle of a nonlinear system -- which is one of the leading hypotheses for tinnitus right now -- then it's not totally implausible that restoration of function would change your tinnitus percepts.
It's not clear that it'd help, but I'm pretty confident that if we can restore hair cell function, someone's going to try.
Wired wrote up a short piece about my hearing aids at the bottom of https://www.wired.com/story/why-we-love-tech-better-humans/
Of course, some drops to regain perfect hearing would be far better.
I was hoping to read that it might also help people like myself who suffer from tinnitus. Sadly, no. Still, if it can restore hearing to the deaf, this is a good thing.
Restoration of hair cells may have knock-on effects for tinnitus. If tinnitus is a maladaptive neuroplasticity (your brain "needs" to hear something so if it can't because you're deaf at that frequency it'll invent things for you to hear instead) that makes sense to model as some stable limit cycle of a nonlinear system -- which is one of the leading hypotheses for tinnitus right now -- then it's not totally implausi…
I was hoping to read that it might also help people like myself who suffer from tinnitus. Sadly, no. Still, if it can restore hearing to the deaf, this is a good thing.
My wife has premature hearing loss of an unknown cause. Doctor kind of shrugged when asked what could be done about it. This was some 15 years ago. I'll push her to make an appointment with a doc again to see if something new has been discovered.
My dad has severe hearing loss (hearing aids, etc.) but we made an interesting discovery: bone-conduction headphones bypass the portion of his ear that's damaged. When he first put them on he literally said: "That's better than I've heard anything sound in a decade". YMMV but it might be something useful to try with your wife.
My wife has premature hearing loss of an unknown cause. Doctor kind of shrugged when asked what could be done about it. This was some 15 years ago. I'll push her to make an appointment with a doc again to see if something new has been discovered.
My dad has severe hearing loss (hearing aids, etc.) but we made an interesting discovery: bone-conduction headphones bypass the portion of his ear that's damaged. When he first put them on he literally said: "That's better than I've heard anything sound in a decade". YMMV but it might be something useful to try with your wife.
I'm curious if this will enable not only the recovery of those cells but also allow us to extend our hearing range
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My dad has severe hearing loss (hearing aids, etc.) but we made an interesting discovery: bone-conduction headphones bypass the portion of his ear that's damaged. When he first put them on he literally said: "That's better than I've heard anything sound in a decade". YMMV but it might be something useful to try with your wife.
For what it's worth, this only works if the source of hearing loss is conductive (e.g. eardrum or the ossicles). If your cochlea or any sub-element (e.g. inner hair cells) are damaged, bone conduction will be no different. In fact, the comparison between acoustic and bone-conduction hearing tests is a key element of audiological testing.