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Your hearing allows you to communicate effectively with the people around you, listen to your favourite music, and tune in with your surroundings. That’s why you have to do your part in preserving your ears, your body’s dedicated vehicles for processing sounds.
It’s also vital to note that you only understand them as your nervous system carries out the information to your brain, triggering your cognitive development for language and logic. Simply put, hearing is thinking. Learn more about this complex process by continuing to read this article.
Your ears send sound information to your brain—even as you sleep. Your brain then filters out irrelevant sounds, such as traffic in the background or mindless chattering in a public place.
Your brain constantly works to select what you hear, extract meaning from the mass of overlapping sound waves in the air, and decide the amount of attention you should give each sound. It takes the signals from your ears, compares them, and locates the source. By figuring out the noise’s origin, you can analyze it as you think about your next course of action.
For instance, if you are awoken by a bird’s sound in the middle of the night, you process it in your ears, leading you to detect where the creature is and what you can do to shut off the distracting noise. That way, you can go back to sleep without any distractions.
Your brain singles out sound sources and compares them to your memory. Doing this helps you determine if the sound is familiar to you. If your brain cannot find any reference to this sound in your memory bank, you will likely be alerted to danger. Your brain can also add a new sound to your memory bank, which can be used for comparison next time.
Raw sound data is transformed into meaning by gathering more information about your surroundings. For instance, your brain lets you feel the size of space from the length of time sound takes to echo, the amount of echo it creates, and the type of surfaces in a room as it bounces off on its way to your ears.
Good hearing ensures that your brain gets all the necessary sound information. Unfortunately, hearing loss or impairment may cause you to miss out on certain frequencies or sounds from particular directions. When this happens, your brain makes an intense effort to extract meaning from the partial sound.
If you suffer from hearing impairment, don’t turn up the volume, which can overload your brain and worsen your hearing ability. You can help your brain accurately extract meaning from sounds by giving it access to the full soundscape. Using a quality modern hearing aid can let you achieve this. It can help focus on the most relevant sound sources and compensate for the sound field’s missing parts.
Hearing aids, especially the latest ones, contain powerful processors. Therefore, they no longer need to narrow down the sound field when you are in noisy environments.
Your hearing is one of your most important senses, and it lets you do more than just surround yourself with sounds. With your brain’s help, you can think better as you learn to appreciate the world around you. If you have trouble hearing, invest in a quality hearing aid to help your brain process sound information and improve your quality of life.
Invest in the perfect hearing aids that suit your comfort, needs, and lifestyle by turning to our hearing instrument practitioners. Fraser Valley Beltone is a hearing aid clinic in Langley and Abbotsford that helps you enjoy the pleasure of hearing. Book an appointment today!