Hearing aids
What is a hearing aid?
A hearing aid is a small electronic device that is to be worn in or behind your ear depending were the damage has been made. It is a huge problem that people have hearing loss without hearing loss you are disadvantaged in most ways of life but with the hearing aid this problem is over They are made to aid a persons hearing by making the sound louder so they can listen, communicate and participate in daily activates. The hearing aid can be used in both noisy and quite situations. A hearing aid can be modified to help different cases of hearing loss. A hearing aid is made up of four main parts:
Microphone: The microphone picks up sound waves and converts them into electrical energy. It then delivers it to the amplifier.
Amplifier: The amplifier is used to increase the amount of electrical energy, which transfers that amplified energy to the speaker.
Speaker: The speaker uses the amplified energy to produce an increased sound so that the person that is hearing impaired can hear.
Battery: The battery supplies the power to the hearing aid it varies in size, has a positive and negative side and the normal life for one of the batteries is 1-4 weeks.
(Beltone , 2014)
How the human hear works
The human ear consisted of three different parts, the inner ear the middle ear and, the outer ear, each different part of the ear contributes a specific reason in the process of detecting and interpreting sound waves. The outer ears are used to collet and channel and collect the sound waves to divert them to the middle ears. The middle ear is used to transform the sound waves energy into internal vibrations of the structure of bones on the middle ears; it ultimately converts these vibrations into the form of...
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Loss of hearing has been a problem for hundreds of year but due to the invention of the hearing aid it has made life of the hearing impair a lot easier to interact with people whom are not hearing impaired. Although the hearing aid is very expensive the research and the creating of the actual product is aiding people with this disability and making them smaller is so they are harder to see and don’t embarrass the users of the hearing aid. I believe that the hearing aid is a very successful but of technology and it has eliminated the problem of hearing loss almost completely because everyone who wears one can hear pretty much perfectly but the fact is that no everyone can afford a hearing aid. If sciences look into the hearing aid more they could make a hearing aid completely internal so one that is built in to the persons ear.
Hearing allows us to take in noises from the surrounding environment and gives us a sense of where things are in relation to us. All those little folds on the outside of the ear, called the tonotopic organization, make it so sound waves in the air are directed to the ear canal, where they can be further processed. Once in the ear, the sound waves vibrate the ear drum, which tell the ear exactly what frequency it is sensing. The vibration of the ear drum is not quite enough to send a signal to the brain, so it needs to be amplified, which is where the three tiny bones in the ear come into play. The malleus or hammer, incus or anvil, and stapes or stirrup amplify this sound and send it to the cochlea. The cochlea conducts the sound signal through a fluid with a higher inertia than air, so this is why the signal from the ear drum needs to be amplified. It is much harder to move the fluid than it is to move the air. The cochlea basically takes these physical vibrations and turns them into electrical impulses that can be sent to the brain. This is...
Deaf Culture is often misunderstood because the hearing world thinks of deafness as a handicap. The Deaf are not given enough credit for their disabilities even though they are unable to hear. Being misunderstood is the biggest reason why they are not accepted in the world of hearing. The learning process for them may be slower and more difficult to learn, but they are still very bright individuals. The problem at hand is the controversy of trying to “fix” the Deaf when they may or may not want to be “fixed”. The hearing world should give Deaf people a chance to show their true talents and abilities of intelligence before rushing to assumptions, such as hearing aids will fix all Deaf people, because Deaf are dumb, have social problems, and
internal structures of the body and returned to the transducer. The transducer converted the returning sound into electronic signals that were processed
Cochlear implants are used for people who are completely Deaf, not being able to hear a single noise or hard of hearing individuals as well. Sound waves go into the ear, entering the ear canal, then hitting the eardrums in which vibrates. Vibration from the eardrum pass major parts in the ear, them being the bone called the Malleus, Incus, and Stapes. These three main parts in the ear amplify the pulse, and then are picked up by small hair-like calls in the cochlea. Moving as the vibration hits, evidence is then sent through the auditory nerve then to the brain, the brain processes the data and in which we describe as sound. A cochlear implant is a highly invasive procedure where the surgeon drills a small hole into the individual’s skull; opening the Malleus bone then a small hole is drilled into the cochlea where the electrodes are inserted. This procedure takes about 2-4 hours, and surgeons use general anesthesia. Having a magnet under the skin/skull for the receptor to hook to, and also have to shave out all little hairs around the cochlea, and spending $40,000 for this implant. Deaf children should not get the cochlear implant because it’s a dramatically change in ones life and affects the way they feel and see themselves.
A hearing loss can present many obstacles in one's life. I have faced many issues throughout my life, many of which affected me deeply. When I first realized that I was hearing-impaired, I didn't know what it meant. As I grew older, I came to understand why I was different from everyone. It was hard to like myself or feel good about myself because I was often teased. However, I started to change my attitude and see that wearing hearing aids was no different than people wearing glasses to see.
You might be wondering how hearing aids work. Well hearing aids make sounds louder so that if a person has trouble hearing can be able to talk to other people and participate in their everyday activities. Thank you to today’s technology hearing aids work with digital technology and they are now equipped with strong computer chips. A hearing aid has a couple different parts...Those parts are the earmold, ear hook, microphone,speaker, amplifier, and the battery. The hearing aid receives the sound through the microphone, which transforms the sound waves to electric signals and then sends them to the amplifier and then the amplifier increases the power of the signals and it then sends them to the speaker so the person could hear it.
Briefly stated, the outer ear (or pinna) 'catches' and amplifies sound by funneling it into the ear canal. Interestingly, the outer ear serves only to boost high frequency sound components (1). The resonance provided by the outer ear also serves in amplifying a higher range of frequencies corresponding to the top octave of the piano key board. The air pressure wave travels through the ear canal to ultimately reach and vibrate the timpanic membrane (i.e.-- the eardrum). At this particular juncture, the pressure wave energy of sound is translated into mechanical energy via the middle ear.
While hearing aids amplify sounds so that a damaged ear can pick them up, cochlear implants send electrical signals directly to the nerves of the inner ear, via implanted electrodes and wires, and are used for people whose hearing loss is so profound that hearing aids are not effective ("Cochlear implants" n. pag) . They came about during the early 1980's and since then has caused a great deal of problems within the deaf community. Many supporters of the cochlear implant think that it is the best chance babies have to actually live a normal life, and that it is a huge leap in technology and that it can alter the way the deaf interact with each other ("Cochlear Implants" n. pag). This is the case of Chris Hall whose son got implants in 1998, he says " "If a kid can't walk, you give him a walker, you do what you can to help them get along in society". If these supporters would be less narrow minded, they would take in to consideration the actual affects it would have in the deaf culture and see that the deaf are not incapable of performing tasks that hearing people do due to the fact that they have a hearing loss.
A transducer is a mechanism that changes one form of energy to another form. A toaster is a transducer that turns electricity into heat; a loudspeaker is a transducer that changes electricity into sound. Likewise, an ultrasound transducer changes electricity voltage into ultrasound waves, and vice versa. This is possible because of the principle of piezoelectricity, which states that some materials (ceramics, quartz, and others) produce a voltage when deformed by an applied pressure. Conversely, piezoelectricity also results in production of a pressure whe...
Individuals who are deaf or are hearing impaired are faced with many problems in today’s world. There are so many tasks and activities that are done today that deaf or hearing impaired people may have difficulty doing because of there handicap. There handicap used to stop them or inhibit them from doing something that they are interested in or there friends and neighbors would do. However in today there are new and different technologies, that help the deaf and hearing impaired in the activities in which they want to participate in which is hard for them to take part in because of there handicap. Technology is used to help with everyday tasks in the lives of deaf and hearing impaired individuals. With out this new technology which is being invented everyday, deaf and hearing impaired people may be considered to have a handicap which prevents them from certain activities, but this is not the case anymore, now these people just have different obstacles which through the use of technology they are learning to over come. They can do anything that regular normal range of hearing individuals can do, due to the new technology being invented everyday.
One such device is the hearing aid. According to the Kendall School Support Services Team (2003), deaf children who wear hearing aids may have increased ability to differentiate between different sounds. They can also better monitor their own voices, making it easier for them to build speech skills. Enhanced ability to understand conversation is another benefit. However, hearing aids do not make sounds clear, nor do they make hearing perfect. Further, the student must sit near the speaker, as extraneous noise makes listening an even greater challenge (Kendall School Support Services Team, 2003).
The differences between the two models in relation to the Deaf community which is a community defined by a ‘common language, culture and collective identity,’ (Glichman & Harvey) is that the Social Model views deafness as a condition that should be grasped, appreciated and conserved as opposed to the Medical view which is that deafness is a condition that should be ‘treated/cured’ (Middleton, Hewison & Mueller, 1998) as well as ‘avoided’ (Models-deafness, 2005). The medical model provides treatment and alternatives to being deaf. Such as Cochlear implants which is a device that mimics sound for deaf people, however, it doesn’t eliminate deafness (Cochlear Implants and the Death of Deaf Culture, 2013). On the other hand the Social Model encourages education for the deaf at an early age for persons diagnosed with the condition (Models-deafness, 2005).
Along with vision, hearing is one of the most important senses that humans have. We use it to communicate, learn, and stay aware of our environment. In fact, hearing is the only sense that never stops receiving sensory input. While all of our other senses become drastically less sensitive when we are sleeping, our brain still processes auditory information to awaken us the second something is wrong. Although this may have been more practically used before people slept safely in homes, it’s still useful for hearing a fire alarm or our alarm clock in the morning. We are able to hear by processing sound waves. This energy travels through the delicate structures in our ears to be transformed into neural activity so that we can perceive the sensory information we receive (Myers, 2010).
Being hearing-impaired is something I have dealt with my entire life; by the time I was five years old, putting on hearing aids in the morning was just as normal as brushing my teeth. As a result of a supportive family and friends, I never believed that being hearing-impaired should limit my success in any way.
Hearing is known to be an automatic function of the body. According to the dictionary, hearing is, “the faculty or sense by which sound is perceived; the act of perceiving sound,” (“hearing…”). Hearing is a physical and involuntary act; therefore, unless one is born with a specific form of deafness, everyone has the natural ability to hear sounds. Sounds constantly surround us in our everyday environments, and because we are so accustomed to hearing certain sounds we sometimes don’t acknowledge them at all (or “listen” to them). The dictionary definition of listening is, “to give attention with the ear; attend closely for the purpose of hearing,” (“listening…”).