Hearing loss occurs gradually. Over the years you may have lost the ability to hear certain sounds in the speech spectrum. You may also be missing normal sounds of the environment, such as: traffic and wind noise; the hum of machinery; and other background noises.
First-time hearing aid wearers, and those with more severe hearing losses, may feel that sound doesn’t seem “natural”. Most of the time, this is due to changes in the brain that occurred when it was deprived of sounds, rather than the sound quality of the hearing aid itself. It will improve.
You see, the hearing system is very complex and your brain will require a period of re-education in order to selectively focus, filter, and interpret sounds.
Understanding hearing loss
First-time hearing aid wearers, and those with more severe hearing losses, may feel that sound doesn’t seem “natural”. Most of the time, this is due to changes in the brain that occurred when it was deprived of sounds, rather than the sound quality of the hearing aid itself. It will improve.
Sounds are processed by neurons within the brain, which are “wired” to process frequencies across the normal range of human hearing. When a neuron is deprived of the sound that it was tasked to process, the brain will reassign that neuron to another job.
When sound is turned back on by your hearing aids, the brain takes a little time to reallocate neurons to interpreting the sounds that had been missing. This process is known as Aural Rehabilitation.
