Another good set of sound simulations

And this time they portray various effects of hearingloss as conceived by the brain, it’s not just a simulation of various frequency losses.

I had all three of them, and with bilateral CI I still have to “work my way trough” “loss of clarity” and “recruitment” (to some degree in various sound environments).

These sound examples were made by Arthur Boothroyd, Ph. D.

Here is the link

I think they might contribute, a little bit more, to the general understanding of what hearing loss is like, for normally hearing people.

Nedsatt hørsel? Sliten? Kurstilbud

Nasjonalt senter for hørsel og psykisk helse arrangerer mestringskurs for deg med nedsatt hørsel. Oppstart januar 2013.

Nedsatt hørsel innebærer for mange en kontinuerlig kompenseringsinnsats. Du må kompensere mentalt for den informasjonen du mister, du kompenserer for muskulære anstrengelser i nakke og skulder, for nedsatt balanse, du bruker energi på å lokalisere hvor lyder kommer fra osv. Stress og følelse av utmattelse forekommer ofte i kjølvannet av nedsatt hørsel.

I forbindelse med doktorgradsprosjektet “Mestring av psykososialt stress ved hørselstap” har vi utarbeidet en kurspakke basert på kognitiv terapi og erfaringer vi har samlet fra hørselshemmede gjennom studien.

Dersom du er interessert, nysgjerrig på dette kurset – eller kjenner noen kurset kunne være aktuelt for, nærmere informasjon:
Sidsel Haaberg, tlf. 22 92 35 02/951 57 782
Maj Volden, tlf. 916 20 315
Jenny Meling Hansen, tlf. 941 54 472

Kurset koster egenandel (for tiden 307,-) pr. samling – opp til frikortsgrensen.

Se for øvrig: her.

Hearing Loss Linked to Three-Fold Risk of Falling – 02/27/2012

http://m.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/hearing_loss_linked_to_three_fold_risk_of_falling

Michael Chorost explains the concept of Cochlear Implants.

The Author of “Rebuilt”, Michael Chorost was recently captured in a video interview published on YouTube. I found his explanations so elegantly put, that they should be viewed by everyone interested. A lot of information, but at the same time, very elegantly put and easily understandable.

Hope you enjoy these: it’s divided into four videos, and 1,2 and 4 are captioned… (don’t ask me why the third isn’t captioned, I don’t know)

Part 1

Part2

Part 3

Part 4

Shy? Investigating social phobia…

Social phobia, also know as social anxiety, is the third largest psychological problem in the world today… This diagnosis has a higher representation among people with hearing difficulties (and other populations segments), than in the average population. This site offers more information: http://www.socialphobia.org/

Background: Katharine Cecilia Peterson (Kate for short, brief presentation further down) has asked me (and others) to join her as a co-therapist for a research project looking into social phobia and the effects of cognitive therapy.

Disclaimer/personal experience: I can not claim expert clinical knowledge regarding social phobia, other than that I have experienced it on my own. To what degree I experienced social phobia is also a subjective matter. Also I am not an expert on cognitive therapy either, other than that of my own experience with such therapy, and it’s effect, regarding my tinnitus (reference to earlier blog posts relating to this matter: No cure for tinnitus, Life gets easier, Difference btw recruitment and tinnitus, Tinnitus cognitive therapy) I was open minded about the cognitive therapy approach, and did all the training by myself, in addition I had three hour long sessions with a professional advisor.

The text after the double line has been copied, translated and adapted from http://katharinececiliapeterson.wordpress.com/ , she writes her blog in Norwegian.

She is a psychologist, and has been a valuable contact for me personally through the years, since I have met her on various occasions/courses, and she works at the place where I received psychological therapy: Nasjonalt Senter for Hørsel og Psykisk Helse. She played a small part (HUGE gratitude on my part!) for my mental wellbeing today, as she helped me get in touch with the right people when I needed it the most. Currently she is heading a research project I will write more about in the time to come (since I am a part of the project, obviously)

Ok, let’s get down to the business at hand 🙂

====================================================

 

Insight through peers

A little while ago I received a comment on this blog. Richard Rutherford had something very important to share. I feel compelled to provide his thoughts to you all, in it’s own post. The initial reason for that is because of what he put his finger on: the issue of audism related to self destruction-mechanisms. I feel he definitely has a very good point. In addition, we had an exchange of thoughts afterwards, which produced additional noteworthy points (these are expressed at the bottom of this post, after the “letter”!).

I had not thought about this issue from the aspect that Richard offered, which is such a beautiful thing about this form of communication (i.e. blogging); one thought or experience leads to another thought. Richard puts it so well in his letter, that I put it here, word for word. (Richard, you should seriously think about writing your own blog :-)  )

As a comment, I would like to say that this issue, even though I didn’t realize it until I read his comment/letter, was one of the major things I worked with during the two years of psychological therapy I underwent in 2006-2008.

(I underline the good stuff, which I found particularly interesting, add links and images which I find suitable (for your viewing pleasure 🙂 ))

So, here it is:

=====Start of letter======

The difference between “recruitment” and tinnitus

I just want to be very clear on the difference between these two phenomena.

They’re both auditory sensory related, but have some significant differences.

Unrealistic Expectations from the World? Audism?

What do people expect from me? They expect me to participate in social activities and to be part of the “common consciousness”. That is a fair expectation in my opinion. In this blog post I want to take a look at some circumstances and  obstacles concerning these expectations. I think it will be wise to read the definition of some of the words I use, they are linked, as the word “expectation” was just linked.. That way we will be on the “same page”.

In this aspect I am thinking about what we expect and when we expect it in terms of my hearing progress. This is also a sore and difficult point on my behalf, since it is much about social interaction and how I am perceived socially. How I am viewed as a person.

As I’m going the path of CI rehabilitation and re-learning to hear, I am doing some discoveries about expectations of my recovery from both myself and others near and dear.

Me, a social outsider

All my life I’ve been a part of the hearing world, and thus a social outsider. Even among my closest friends and family, I got and still get, remarks and comments that hurt to the core of my being. I’m sometimes left with a feeling that people suspect me of WANTING to be isolated or withdrawn from issues that are talked about. I often feel misunderstood and misinterpreted. For instance my withdrawal from social events is sometimes being interpreted as a lack of interest, or attempt to socialize. That is so unfair and sad. I’ll explain why…

The more people talking at the same time, the more impossible it is for me to interact in a meaningful way. Believe me when I say I really wish I was able to interact with others on their terms, but there is a huge damage in my hearing that makes that incredibly hard. There is a limit to everyone’s mental capacity and endurance. My limit is shorter than most in terms of social interaction due to the nature of listening and understanding.

Hearing Loss Demonstrator

I wish I came across this many years ago…

HearLoss is an interactive Windows PC program for demonstrating to normally hearing people the effects of hearing loss. With HearLoss you can replay speech, music and noise under a variety of loudness, filtering and masking conditions typical of hearing impairments. Best of all you can interactively change the settings and demonstrate their consequences.

Description

The HearLoss program plays back pre-recorded audio samples of some speech, some music and some typical background noise, either singly or in combination. As it replays, three sliders control a simulation of the effects of three common consequences of hearing loss: loss in amplitude sensitivity, reduction in frequency range, and loss in spectral detail. Changes in the amplitude sensitivity slider changes the loudness of the sound, changes to the frequency range slider changes the upper frequency limit of the sound, while changes to the spectral detail slider changes the amount of fine structure present in the spectrum.

http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/resource/hearloss/

Suggestions for Use

This is one way you might use the program to demonstrate the effects of hearing loss to normally-hearing people:

1. Start the music playing and adjust levels so that the audience can hear it clearly. Stop the music.
2. Explain that deafness is not just all or nothing, but that hearing impairments come in various degrees.
3. Play music and demonstrate loss in amplitude sensitivity to mild, moderate and severe losses.
4. Repeat for speech. Point out that difficulty in hearing speech affects our social interactions – we can’t follow what is going on in a group conversation, for example.
5. Explain that if hearing loss was just a loss in sensitivity, then we could restore peoples’ hearing with just an amplifier.
6. Explain that most hearing loss is not just a drop in quantity but also a dop in the quality of sound perceived. In particular the kind of hearing impairment asoociated with old age has associated changes in frequency range and spectral detail.
7. Play music and demonstrate what a reduction in frequency range means: at mild, moderate and severe levels.
8. Repeat for speech. Point out that even if the speech were loud enough, the loss of high frequencies makes it harder to understand.
9. Play music and demonstrate the consequences of a loss in spectral detail. The effect of this slider is like looking at an out-of-focus photograph – you can’t see all the fine detail. Get the audience to listen as you bring the slider back to normal – you should hear the signal getting "clearer".
10. Play speech and noise simultaneously with sliders set to normal. Point out that the speech is still fairly easy to understand.
11. Add a moderate loss of frequency range and spectral detail. The speech is pretty unintelligible now, although it becomes a bit clearer when the noise is turned off. Hearing impaired people find listening in conditions of noise far more difficult than normally hearing people.

Copyright

HearLoss is not public domain software, its intellectual property is owned by Mark Huckvale, University College London. However HearLoss may be used and copied without charge as long as the program remains unmodified and continues to carry this copyright notice. Please contact the author for other licensing arrangements. HearLoss carries no warranty of any kind, you use it at your own risk.

A good analogy of HA, unilateral CI and bilateral CI for hearing people

The following words was observed on Facebook (written by my fellow CI-bloggers) this morning.

A CI blog-friend of mine, Valerie, asked for advice on Facebook:

“Our school will have visitors out next week, how do I explain my cochlear implants and deafness without them treating me differently????

Then another CI blog-friend of mine, “the mad dasher”, Sam Spritzer, offered Valerie a very good answer, and I feel compelled to share this with my readers:

“

Sam Spritzer at 1:17am December 5

If I were you, I wouldn’t even worry about them treating you differently. You can tell them that CIs are the 21st century version of HAs, only better. And if you have to use an analogy, CIs to HAs are like color tv to b&w tvs. And a bi-lateral CIer is HDTV to standard color tv. Good luck!”

This was the best analogy I have seen to date, in order to explain hearing technology to hearing people. Also he is right in saying not to worry about being treated differently. It’s easy to say, of course, but there’s truth in it. I can vouch for that… Think about something else. Avoid or avert those “worry” thoughts…

So, I just want to rewrite the analogy a little bit:

Imagine hearing aids are like Black&White TV. Then CI is like color TV.

If unilateral CI is like color TV, then bilateral CI is like HDTV.

Status update IV – early autumn 2008 – epilogue

You people must become fed up with all these “Status update”-posts, no?
After this rather long and 5-way split Status update, I realized there are some other health issues that needed addressing.

It also serves as a reminder to myself that the purpose of this blog is mainly to be like a medical journal (for myself and others who might need the info).

Status of Tinnitus: rather unchanged.

It is still sounding the same as it did when I started being bothered by it, with a rather constant “UUYYUUUUYYYUUUUYYYUUUUUYYYUUUYYYUU….” around 1 to 1,5 KHz. It’s worst on the right ear, and it varies in intensity (or strength/volume) according to how tired I am. I don’t know if that means that the tinnitus is worse because it’s actually louder or if it’s because my tiredness makes my brain more susceptible. It is a matter of perception I think…

General health, back to regular training

I have started training again, after a whole year without any training regime whatsoever. The body seems to respond well to the exercise as opposed to one year ago when any exercise gave me pain and aches in both bones and muscles. My goal is that my little overweight shall become less during this winter instead of becoming more as it usually does during the dark season.
The chronic pain in my knees is fading. This is a little miracle for me, because it was troublesome to just take the stairs at times. I thought the chronic pains was a one-way ticket into some sketchy knee-surgery-history. I’m glad I was wrong 🙂
I have become conscious about the fact that I can not and should not run anymore in order to save the knees from more wear. So my focus has been switched to alternatives like kayaking, biking and swimming. And that is all right by me.

High permanent stress levels leads to immune system deficiency?

I have a theory that the level of stress in me the latter years made my immune system turn on my own body as a warning mechanism (the signal being: slow down!). I don’t know if this makes any sense, but what if the immune system reacted so strong to the state I was in that it actually attacked parts of me it was not supposed to attack? I know, it’s a wild theory, so if anyone has any views on this I would appreciate any comment. I googled on the term “autoimmunity”, but those articles where mainly oriented toward causes for arthritis and diabetes. I didn’t go deep though…

Parenting, oncoming deafness and it’s effect

I am a single parent. I just had my son over for an extended weekend before he takes a long summer vacation with his mother.

My son hasn’t reached puberty yet, and hence has a boyish thin voice… Unfortunately this is the kind of voice that strikes me the worst, since it is in the frequency-neighborhood where I’m loosing hair-cells in the cochlea nowadays. It is the frequency of my tinnitus and it’s where my hyperacusia hits me the worst…

He is a joyful kid with a lot of energy. He has tried my hearing aids, and understand that it hurt my ears that he shouts, but as most kids, he can’t remember everything at once.

I have to hush him when he forgets. Which he follows most of the time (unless he is upset with me).

What troubles me in this, is my own condition. As a result of having my son around, I quickly become exhausted, because as most kids he likes to communicate, and we talk… He is signing some, but it takes effort to learn the signing properly, so it ends up with help-signs only. I don’t I have the energy for learning it… It’s a paradox… I need to learn it, but I’m to exhausted to even go to school once a week (I tried!). The only thing that could help me is the operation, and for that I have to wait…  It’s so wasted to wait!!!!  Aaaarggghhh!

Anyway, the hyperacusia and the recruitment and the following fatigue affects me mentally, and sometimes I can loose my self-control a little, ending in me being too harsh or too abrupt in my reactions. So I find myself using more energy trying to stay in control, rather than raising my son and using my energy positively. I don’t feel like I have a choice…

I have to use the first hours of my days do get things done, because by noon I’m exhausted and

run on will-power and love… At his bedtime I feel like I have the mental capacity as a drunk… Reading-time I have to do without any sound… Just listening to my own voice hurts…

This is not a “normal” life… I need that operation now!

Status update III – part 1 of 3 – Sensory input

Since I’ll be going offline in order to be a farmer, welder, lumberjack, car-mechanic and on top of that plans to undertake some kayak expeditions in Sweden next week, I might as well get my overdue status report out now. It became so long, I decided to split it in three and they will automatically post while I’m away (how neat is that 🙂 )

My hearing and health status is difficult for others to comprehend. I have done a decent job explaining it to my family in small doses. Part of the problem to make others understand, is that it has been hard to understand for myself. It is a condition that seems kind of vague. Since I have no way of real comparison as to what is “normal” level of function, I have been assembling data here and there. Talked to post-CI operated, read some literature and most of all researched on the glorious WWW. The process is ongoing.

My hearing and health status

Technically I have a profound hearing loss. I’m almost as deaf “as a doorknob” as Abbie so nicely put it. A few remaining hair cells in lower frequencies up to around 1000 Hz (1 kHz) is all I have in my residual hearing. I have explained “recruitment” before, and that is still a big issue. Consequently I suffer from hyperacusia, which gives med a kind of head-ache within seconds. It feels like being struck hard on both sides of my head (by the ears) at the same time with something physical (as in blunt violence). The pain then seems to go through my head from ear to ear, kind of pulsating into the brain.
Sources that are prone to give me these hyperacusia-attacks is: my son when he forget himself and shouts/screams, the refrigerators compressor when I stand close to it, cars and traffic, multiple sources of sound (especially when trying hard to comprehend speech, the sounds coming from my computer (not sure if it’s vibration sound from hard drives or the chassis fans. The list of troubling sounds go on and on.

Secondary sensory disturbances are making themselves more and more noticeably.

Feeling of vertigo is increasing, and from time to time I experience trouble with my balance. I almost trip and have to make corrective steps quickly in order to prevent myself falling to the ground. Especially when visual context changes quickly, like first looking up at trees and the sky and then looking down on the ground. Or if I walk down a corridor, and stairs appear right around a corner… The sudden visual change from flat floor to stairs going down is becoming a challenge. Railing next to the stairs are a good thing for me now. This is a problem going down. Not so much while going up the stairs.

Photophobia is more acute than ever. White clouds are the worst weather condition for me. I can have trouble driving when the sky is white with bright illuminating clouds. Under such conditions, my eyes feel sore and I squint as much as possible, and sometimes the eyes get filled with tears. Sunshine doesn’t bother me much as I can avoid the direct source. An entire sky with bright white clouds are a little more difficult to shield from.  Thank heavens for sunglasses.
I also experience dry eyes after a day with a lot of light. My nice cozy 24″ computer flat screen can illuminate quite well, to the point of discomfort. Good thing all this is adjustable. I use a lot of dark colors on software’s skins, on desktop and so on. Also I have adjusted the panel itself to lower brightness. Let’s just say that at times I blink a lot, and I do take breaks.

Audio depth perception (and pitch)

Thanks to all friends who responded about my question of wether to fight for bilateral from the start-line or do one by one…

The decision has now been made 🙂 I want stereo!!! I want depth perception and I want my pitch back….

This image is a good analogy of the sound-problem I have these days. Try to focus on this image for an hour or so, and then you can slightly imagine what it is like for me to concentrate on speech that is “out of focus” for my brain…

Also thanks to Michael Chorost for his (previous posts and) article in “The Journal of Life Sciences”: “Living in stereo” on the subject.

Since I’m already on the path of thanking people, I’d like to include Amy Shah for writing an article about the importance of pitch in speech comprehension: Pitch Perception and Cochlear Implants. This article illuminated a black hole in my understanding of what is happening to my sense of hearing… (My question was: I can still hear somewhat, but why has it become so difficult to understand speech? Her article explained that to me…)

Try this for testing your Pitch perception ability…

It’s all about perception…

My un-sound condition – pre CI era

I want to make this list in order to remind myself what it was like before I got the CI (2007/2008). Maybe I run into problems post-surgery post-sound activation and need a reminder of how I reacted to sounds before the operation(s). It’s a time capsule to myself…

Here’s a similar post I wrote January this year…

These are the sounds that causes great stress, fatigue, even pain and vertigo in me these days… 

• All things mechanical like car engines, especially bigger engines like on buses and trucks.
• to many voices at the same time, especially if a little loud
• the clanking sound of ceramics against ceramics (dinner plates)
• my son at the top of his voice (vertigo)
• my mothers voice when louder
• children voices
• the vibration sounds from my computer, or maybe it’s one of the fans
• inside my car
• elevator music and “muzak” (because it’s too faint for me to grasp, or too noisy otherwise, my brain tries too hard)
• the hiss from the steamer on a cappuccino-machine
• if everything else is quiet, the refrigerator noise is picked up by my HA and that sound wears me down
• the air-condition in office buildings and alike
• stiletto-heels and other hard shoe soles on hard surfaces
• vacuum-cleaner and other domestic appliances
• music     😦
• any sounds in a room with bad acoustics (naked floors, walls and ceiling echoing sounds)
• any background sound when I’m having a conversation

These are the sounds I can’t hear at all anymore even with hearing aids on

• Birds singing (could hear them faintly as a kid)
• My cat meowing
• My bedside alarm clock
• the fire alarm
• the doorbell
• running water
• rain falling on rooftop
• someone yelling my name from a distance or another room

My hearing diagrams

Finally got myself around to scan these charts and post them here 😀

First of all, here is a source of terminology and technical explanations related to sound.

From 2004:

The yellow “banana” is the speech discrimation area for normal hearing. Deafness is defined as below 85 dB. The measurement stops at 100 dB. On this measurement I was intent on doing the best I could, so I probably cheated by looking at signs in the face of the lady doing the test, through the looking glass from the booth I sat in…. Another problem is phantom sounds or echoes that appear from the test itself. Did I hear it or not? Was it a phantom sound or a real test sound? I have taken this test so many times that I quickly get the rythm of sounds from the audiologist and know when the sounds go up and down… I know their testing regime instinctively… Sad thing it only hurt myself when I cheated on the tests, the hearing aids were adjusted based on these results…

From 2006, 2 years later:

 

A noticeable drop in the 125 to 500 Hz-area (the deepest bass sound frequencies). This is the last test I took before commencing the long road to a CI in Norway. There is no doubt, the hearing is declining and I am clinically deaf, and have been for some time….

I also took a speech comprehension test (bottom chart on the 2006 diagram) and I think I scored 0%… What I heard I could only take a wild guess on….

What’s next?

Not before long I will post an abridged translation of a letter that I have sent to the Norwegian Treasury Department (Finansdepartementet). This is something I have been working on for some time now, in the wake of the budget cuts at the premier hospital i Norway; Rikshospitalet (ref. last postings regarding my interview on national tv etc). This work was also the reason why I needed “time” off from my blog (good thing the Easter came in the middle of this). Stay tuned friends!

Status update II

Where to begin??? Well, since my last “Status update from Nov. 6th 2007” (where everything is still valid, I won’t repeat everything) some things has changed.

Overall everything is a little bit worse. Tinnitus is loud, perhaps more constant, fatigue is a bit more severe. I get tired a lot faster from a lot less sound. Headaches are frequent.
It’s gotten to the point where I can’t stand the sound of pretty much anything. Even faint fan-noise is uncomfortable. I’m pretty much intolerable to any sound now.
Less than a year ago I was able to listen to music, now I have my hearing aids turned off more than they are on… I rely more and more on my lip-reading skills…

Bilateral CI-operation is still my number one priority. Other than that I continue to take care of my 7 year old son, my fantastic girlfriend (so grateful to have you in my life, honey!!!), family and myself as best as I can. My psychologist has helped me to be able to be comfortable with the fact that there’s not much more I can do. So instead of feeling lost in a black hole, filled with despair, I relax as much as I can, think positive as much as I can and so on. But I have to admit that some times I get the blues and wished that CI-operation could be in the past instead of in the future. But then again, that’s something to look forward to, right?

I am now at about number 60 on the waiting-list for the CI-screening. About 4 months ago I was at the 100th place. If that pace holds, it means about 10 patients a month, which means I could be looking for an appointment at around 6 months from now… Say august… I certainly hope so!!! I really shouldn’t complain, because I’m a lucky guy, really, who live in Norway and these kind of operations are funded by our health-care system… But things can always be better! If not for me, than maybe for the future post-linguistic-deaf person who need CI…

It will be interesting to see how the hospital will respond to my request for doing both ears simultaneously…. It’s not at all standard procedure, I know. It’s just that there’s really no alternative for me, so I might as well get both ears done at the same time…

I think the technology is ripe (Advanced Bionics Harmony with HiRes90K implants that can do 120 frequency bands), the surgery-techniques have developed and are pretty secure. Besides, operating one ear at a time is less cost-efficient than doing both at the same time. 300 000 NOK for one, and 500 000 NOK for two. That’s a whopping 20% saving! Or 100 000 NOK in plain numbers. Not to mention, my recovery will be over once and for all, and I can get back to the workforce sooner.

If the surgeries are done one at a time, I guess it will be almost 3 more years before I’ll get through it for good. In total that could be 6 years (!) of my life dominated by this CI-process…

The long walk…

If I also take into consideration the time I spent dealing with the fact that I slowly lost my hearing, I would have to add a few years to those 6 waiting for CI. I also struggled with work since 2002. I’m up to almost 10 years of my life!!! If everything had been optimized, it could have been as short as 2 maybe 3 years….  Something could have been done a lot better by the health-care system and by the governments…

I hope that I will be able to work and function even with one CI, but I know it will take more strain on me. I know how it is to be deaf on one ear, too (all those times with defect HA, no good battery etc. etc.). And remember, CI is not fixing my hearing to a 100%, but maybe 30% of perfect hearing. Those 30% is certainly a lot more than the 0,5% I have now…. In fact, it’s more than I ever had. All my life I had approximately 20% residue hearing… And if I get more sound from all over the frequency-chart, I will be a very happy normally functioning deaf man! 🙂

Other than my deafening, my knees are shot, I’m still waiting to hear from the hospital after the initial response that my request has been recorded and acknowledged… I’m not able to do any physically challenging things like running (forget it), ice or in-line skating, swimming(!) or long walks…  I’ve been gaining kilos all throughout this winter 🙂  More of me to love 😉

Last night I finally got through the sleep-registration for detecting if I’m suffering from sleep apnea or just plain snoring… Something I decided needed to be ruled out as cause or bi-factor of my relentless fatigue…. Report is due in the mail sometime soon…

I have to thank all my blog-friends here: Thank you for sharing your experiences with the world, thank you for reading my blog and for encouraging words and support! I salute you all! You are indeed a well of good information!

Beautiful Butterfly Jen, Bionic Woman Abby, Running Crazy Sam, Michael is writing Chorost, Metal in his head Jeff, Great Cochlear Kids, Roberta from Italy (where’s your blog?) and many more!

Technorati Tags: postlinguistic deaf,cochlear implant,deaf

Unconditional condition

I just sat very comfortably in my favorite chair in front of my computer for two hours, doing some work that requires concentration. I had no sounds to distract me, since I turned my hearing aids off for the work-session.
I can’t stand the sound of the fans, even though I have water-cooled most of my rig, the hard-drives give off too much heat for the whole thing to be able to run without fans… I think the sound can’t be much more than 17 – 20 dB (according to fan specifications), and that’s a faint sound, really. But my hearing aids are the most powerful there is (to my knowledge) and they’re cranked to the max. (Widex Senso Diva). So I turn them off more and more these days…

The recruitment is killing me if I don’t turn them off.

The tinnitus is there as always, but not really bothering me concentration-vise. It’s sort of comforting, since the sound now has a rather steady tone. (before it was a chaos of frequencies and variations in strength/volume)
Anyway, I sit, my head is not moving, my eyes are only fixated on the screen, and my concentration goes to the task at hand. The first hour goes fine, no problems.
The second hour I start to get physical sensations in my head. It is like pressure building slowly up.
I had a good night and I’m not tired. I have no stress to complete the work I do, and have no deadlines for anything. It’s Sunday 🙂

Then suddenly I get these auditory sensations, it’s like a silent storm. I can feel it somehow. Not like pain, it is not unpleasant, it’s just a sensation of very weak electric current in my brain. Like a blanket of electricity sliding back and forth like the radar screen image.  It’s like a soft “wooosh” inside my brain…
The sensation that I have are connected to my ears, and at the same time they affect all of my brain (at least it feels like it does). I have no control of this sensation.

I wrote about this sensation before, connected to a pre-sleep phenomenon. This is very much the same, only now I get it during daytime too…

Seconds after this “wooosh”-sensation I feel dizzy (I guess there’s some kind of activity affecting my Vestibule where the balance-nerves are situated). It’s a weak vertigo, even though I sit still, are at peace with no stress. And I know I don’t have Meniére, thank goodness…

After this my ability to concentrate is worse. It’s difficult to keep a thought for as long as I like. My mind has always been a multitasking one; while doing one thing, my mind has been working out what the next thing I should/want to do… This is impossible in the state I’m in after only two hours of working effortlessly… It’s frustrating for me, because if I’m doing something that gives me a thought that I want to pursue, the short-term memory isn’t working as I’m used to. So when I complete the task I worked on, I KNOW that there was something I thought of doing, like searching for a special kind of information, or look up a certain fact etc. etc. But it’s gone… Sometimes I sit for 10 minutes of more, pondering what it was that ignited that thought, trying to reconstruct the idea for myself… Sometimes I get it, most often I just move on… I can’t let it get to me.

In short it makes me feel like I’m cognitively amputated… The SUDOKU-thing helped me understand this better…

And by writing this now, and concentrating on the subject and all the aspects of writing, I feel I’m pushing myself… I’m starting to get a headache now… This is the part I do not understand at all…

I haven’t heard a sound all morning (it’s now 12.30, I started working at 9.30). I know my hearing is disappearing, and the tinnitus is singing it’s tune. But why is it a strain for me to do something that doesn’t affect my hearing? Why do I get this dizzy feel, why the headache, why the memory-problems, why the multitasking problem, why the feeling of fatigue? Can it be that the optical-nerve also lies close the the nerves of the auditory nerve and the balance-nerve? It is all connected somehow…

My jaws feel like they had a punch (they’re sore, like I chewed gum for a few hours). My temples hurt a little bit. The dizzy feeling is there (but I’m not having trouble with the balance, though).

This state/condition will last all day, until late at night, then I feel better again, but the paradox then is that I need to sleep. I might me tired, but want to stay up because the world feel somewhat more vivid to me. Is it connected to me originally being a B-person? I’m not extreme, have no troubles getting up in the morning whenever… (but used to)

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Vestibular disorder symptoms I have experienced

I came across an interesting website for an organization called VEDA (VEstibular Disorder Association).  I found this list of possible symptoms that is very interesting.

Image copied from “vestibular system.” Online Art. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 23 Jan. 2008
Here is an explanation of the Vestibular system.

I did not initially place all these symptoms into the same category (i.e. having to do with my hearing), but maybe I should have??? I exctracted the whole list and will excempt (a strikethrough line) those not experienced by me. If commented, the comment has been marked like this.

This list was a revelation to me… It all fits, kind of… Seems it connects to the wiring of the vestibulo-cochlear nerve: the nerve that carries information from the inner ear to the brain. Also called the eighth cranial nerve, auditory nerve, or acoustic nerve. If the “recruitment”-theory in my previous article holds water, the information about these symptoms could also have some bearing on the subject of my condition.

Vision

• Trouble focusing or tracking objects with the eyes; objects or words on a page seem to jump, bounce, float, or blur or may appear doubled
• Discomfort from busy visual environments such as traffic, crowds, stores, and patterns.
• Sensitivity to light, glare, and moving or flickering lights; fluorescent lights may be especially troublesome Very much so!
• Tendency to focus on nearby objects; increased discomfort when focusing at a distance
• Increased night blindness; difficulty walking in the dark Yes, have to find walls or points of support in order to be able to move, get a complete feeling of immediate disorientation
• Poor depth perception

Hearing

• Hearing loss; distorted or fluctuating hearing Well, that’s not exactly news…
• Tinnitus (ringing, roaring, buzzing, whooshing, or other noises in the ear) Very much so!
• Sensitivity to loud noises or environments Especially high pitch like childrens voices
• Sudden loud sounds may increase symptoms of vertigo, dizziness, or imbalance Yes!

 

Explaining the analogy: "Recruitment" of hair cells in cochlea

During my research into my own declining hearing- and health condition, I came across information about a phenomenon regarding hair cells in cochlea called “recruitment”. I strongly suspect “recruitment” is what happens to me. It certainly would explain a lot of the things that happen(ed) to me and my hearing and the fatigue…

(Most of the text that follows is copied from this page at hearinglosshelp.com and edited by myself for the sake of this blog and my readers.)

What is “Recruitment”?

Very simply, “recruitment” is when we perceive sounds as getting too loud too fast. How is it possible to hear too loud when the hearing in fact is vanishing, you may ask… Well, be patient with me and read on…

“Recruitment” is always a by-product of a sensorineural hearing loss. If you do not have a sensorineural hearing loss, you cannot have “recruitment”. In simple layterm this means that this condition only affects those who have a significant loss of hearing caused by haircell-damage in cochlea (mainly).

As a sidenote; there are two other phenomena that often get confused with “recruitment”. These are hyperacusis (super-sensitivity to normal sounds) and phonophobia (fear of normal sounds resulting in super-sensitivity to them). Both hyperacusis and phonophobia can occur whether you have normal hearing or are hard of hearing.

An analogy for understanding how “Recruitment” got its name

Perhaps the easiest way to understand “recruitment” is to make an analogy between the keys on a piano and the hair cells in a cochlea.

The piano keyboard contains a number of white keys while our inner ears contain thousands of “hair cells.” Think of each hair cell as being analogous to a white key on the piano.

The piano keyboard is divided into several octaves. Each octave contains 8 white keys. Similarly, the hair cells in our inner ears are thought to be divided into a number of “critical bands” with each critical band having a given number of hair cells. Each critical band is thus analogous to an octave on the piano.

Just as every key on the piano belongs to one octave or another, so also, each hair cell belongs to a critical band.

The requirements for “Recruitment” 

When you play a chord on the piano—you press two or more keys together but they send one sound signal to your brain. Similarly, when any hair cell in a given critical band is stimulated, that entire critical band sends a signal to our brains which we “hear” as one unit of sound at the frequency that critical band is sensitive to. This is the situation when a person has normal hearing.

However, when we have a sensorineural hearing loss, some of the hair cells die or cease to function. When this happens, each “critical band” no longer has a full complement of hair cells. This would be analogous to a piano with some of the white keys yanked out. The result would be that some octaves wouldn’t have 8 keys any more.

Our brains don’t like this condition at all. They require each critical band to have a full complement of hair cells. Therefore, just as any government agency, when it runs short of personnel, puts on a recruitment drive, so too, our brains do the same thing. But since all the hair cells are already in service, there are no spares to recruit.

Getting to the point – what “Recruitment” means

What our brains do is rather ingenious. They simply recruit some hair cells from adjacent critical bands. (Here is that word: recruit or recruitment.) These hair cells now have to do double duty or worse. They are still members of their original critical band and now are also members of one or more additional critical bands.

With only a relatively few hair cells dead, then adjacent hair cells may just do double duty. However, if many hair cells die any given hair cell may be recruited into several different critical bands, in order to have a full complement of hair cells in each critical band.

 

 

The results of the phenomenon known as “Recruitment” – the conclusion

The results of this “recruitment” gives us two basic problems. (notice the underlined parts!)

1. The sounds reaching our brains appear to be much louder that normal. This is because the recruited hair cells still function in their original critical bands and also in the adjacent one(s) they have been “recruited” into.

   Remember that when any hair cell in a critical band is stimulated, the whole critical band sends a signal to our brains. So the original critical band sends one unit of sound to our brain, and at the same time, since the same hair cell is now “recruited” to an adjacent critical band, it stimulates that critical band also. Thus, another unit of sound is sent to our brains. Hence, we perceive the sound as twice as loud as normal.

   

   If our hearing loss is severe, a given hair cell may be “recruited” into several critical bands at the same time. Thus our ears could be sending, for example, eight units of sound to our brains and we now perceive that sound as eight times louder than normal. You can readily see how sounds can get painfully loud very fast! This is when we complain of our “recruitment”.

   In fact, if you have severe “recruitment”, when a sound becomes loud enough for you to hear, it is already too loud for you to stand.
   

2. The second result of “recruitment” is “fuzzy” hearing. Since each critical band sends one signal at the frequency of that spesific critical band, when hair cells get recruited into adjacent bands, they stimulate each critical band they are a member of to send their signals also. Consequently, instead of hearing just one frequency for a given syllable of sound, for example, perhaps our brains now receive eight signals at the same time—each one at a different frequency.

   The result is that we now often cannot distinguish similar sounding words from each other. They all sound about the same to us. We are not sure if the person said the word “run” or was it “dumb,” or “thumb,” or “done,” or “sun,” or? In other words, we have problems with discrimination as well as with volume. If our “recruitment” is bad, our discrimination scores likely will go way down.

   When this happens, basically all we hear is either silence, often mixed with tinnitus or loud noise with little intelligence in it. Speech, when it is loud enough for us to even hear it, becomes just so much meaningless noise.

   This is why many people with severe recruitment cannot successfully wear hearing aids. Their hearing aids make all sounds too loud—so that they hurt. Also, hearing aids cannot correct the results of our poor discrimination. We still “hear” meaningless gibberish.

   However, people with lesser recruitment problems will find much help from properly adjusted hearing aids. Most modern hearing aids have some sort of “compression” circuits in them. When the compression is adjusted properly for our ears, these hearing aids can do a remarkable job of compensating for our recruitment problems.

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