One of hearing loss’s most puzzling mysteries might have been solved by scientists from the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the revelation could result in the overhauling of the design of future hearing aids.
The enduring notion that voices are isolated by neural processing has been debunked by an MIT study. Tuning into individual levels of sound may actually be handled by a biochemical filter according to this study.
How Background Noise Effects Our Ability to Hear
Only a small portion of the millions of individuals who suffer from hearing loss actually use hearing aids to deal with it.
Though a major boost in one’s ability to hear can be the result of using a hearing aid, settings with lots of background noise have typically been a problem for individuals who wear a hearing improvement device. For example, the steady buzz associated with settings like restaurants and parties can wreak havoc on a person’s ability to discriminate a voice.
If you’re a person who is experiencing hearing loss, you most likely recognize how frustrating and stressful it can be to have a one-on-one conversation with someone in a crowded room.
Scientists have been closely investigating hearing loss for decades. The way that sound waves travel through the ear and how those waves are distinguished, due to this body of research, was believed to be well understood.
Scientists Discover The Tectorial Membrane
But the tectorial membrane wasn’t identified by scientists until 2007. You won’t see this microscopic membrane made of a gel-like material in any other parts of the body. The deciphering and delineation of sound is achieved by a mechanical filtering performed by this membrane and that might be the most intriguing thing.
Minute in size, the tectorial membrane rests on little hairs within the cochlea, with small pores that control how water moves back and forth in reaction to vibrations. Researchers observed that different tones reacted differently to the amplification produced by the membrane.
The frequencies at the highest and lowest range seemed to be less impacted by the amplification, but the study found strong amplification in the middle frequencies.
It’s that progress that leads some to believe MIT’s groundbreaking breakthrough could be the conduit to more effective hearing aids that ultimately allow for better single-voice recognition.
The Future of Hearing Aid Design
The basic principles of hearing aid design haven’t changed much over the years. Tweaks and fine-tuning have helped with some enhancements, but most hearing aids are basically comprised of microphones which receive sounds and a loudspeaker that amplifies them. Regrettably, that’s where one of the design’s drawbacks becomes apparent.
Amplifiers, typically, are not able to discern between different frequencies of sounds, because of this, the ear gets boosted levels of all sounds, that includes background noise. Tectorial membrane research could, according to another MIT researcher, result in new, state-of-the-art hearing aid designs which would provide better speech recognition.
In theory, these new-and-improved hearing aids could functionally tune in to a specific frequency range, which would enable the wearer to hear isolated sounds such as a single voice. With this concept, the volume of those sounds would be the only sounds amplified to aid in reception.
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References
https://www.machinedesign.com/motion-control/researchers-discover-secret-how-we-can-pick-out-voice-crowd
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-01/16/c_137749535.htm
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2010-11-tuning-mechanism.html
