Our normal activities require hearing, yet we take hearing for granted. This is largely because the ear does its job without our having to pay attention to it. Hearing is the only system that allows us to know what is going on everywhere in our environment. But we don’t have to be looking at the twig that is snapping to know there is something behind us in the dark.

Only in the last 20 years have new major understandings come to light regarding the secrets of our amazing organ of hearing.

The Organ of Corti is a special system that most of us have been lucky to experience. The basic structure of the human ear is present in the fetus at six months and hearing begins before birth. This highly intricate sensory organ is already developing its linking system for sound with the brain. It is the smallest yet most elegant organ in the body.

We must give thanks to some earlier pioneers, such as Alexander Graham Bell for developing the telephone, and Thomas Edison the phonograph. These inventions were fascinating and able to capture voices, music, and other sounds over great distances. This brought people together in the sharing of communication, talent, and talent and entertainment.

While most of us have shared this joy of hearing not all understand what is happening when this precious gift is diminished or taken away

Unfortunately, hearing loss had already been finding its way around to many for some time due to age, environment and possibly genetics. It had already played a part in driving a wedge of separation between the hearing and those who possessed a hearing loss, leaving the latter feeling disconnected from their once active lifestyles, and now left to wonder how to cope and live the same as they had previously done.

The question is, has hearing loss found you? Or someone in your family?

What will you do? How will you and those you know cope?

Lucky for many of us, the new invention called the Hearing Aid brought to us by our early sound pioneers would soon follow!

Instrumentation and help for the hearing would come full circle for the those suffering from partial hearing loss. These instruments are able to bring selected frequency into focus and mathematically and precisely tune, calculate, and boost the meaningful acoustic sound energy such as the spoken voice and other important sounds that we are fond of. These sounds are reproduced and brought back into one’s hearing range, bringing back the lost data that the impaired ear was losing.

Although we have come a long way, still the hearing aid is not yet perfected and connected to our brain. Usually for each person the amount of loss and damage is different and found in different parts of the ear. For some types of hearing damage, hearing aids have not always held the answer. However, recently we have made great progress into being able to assist specific types of inner ear problems that had previously frustrated users.

The Organ of Corti is made up of sensory hair cells which receive and transfer incoming messages on to the brain. New studies are now helping us develop better miniature custom computers or hearing instruments that are better able to process information. They are also able to protect the wearer who is sensitive to even small increases in sound from overly loud sounds. This over sensitivity to sound may be a result of wearers having lost the outer region of hair cells in the inner ear. The hearing instruments can control gain by boosting or automatically softening the sounds. Sophisticated hearing systems can now automatically soften that gain or even boost the soft sounds.

Fricative high frequency consonant parts of speech which just seem to be too soft for a particular situation are now being able to make those adjustments by precisely delivering that important needed speech information, which makes up for about 65% of our understanding right back into range.

It is good to remember, that all results are not the same, and that everyone may not immediately receive the same kind of benefit.

A period of time for hearing therapy is often required to reroute and rewire sound back to the brain, and to restimulate the hair cells and the auditory cortex of the brain. This allows it to relearn and once again understand the meaning of sound and speech.

Hopefully in helping you, we will have all the tools to successfully meet your expectations. But, it will take work. Some folks even make the all out commitment and select today’s most advanced systems and may overlook the time and work that may be involved in fully going through this relearning and readjustment period.

The length of time they postponed receiving hearing help and their specific frequency hair cell damage might be much more extensive and require more time for brain sound adaptation to fully appreciate the benefit. Usually if they continue to wear the instrument anyway and give it time the brain sound mapping will begin to take route.

The hearing aid in many cases will take the special place of a sound seed and even though you just replanted it is going to need you doing the watering from the practice and wearing of it.

So do not listen to their discouraging, incorrect early judgments.

And even if they have had the hearing aids for three years, have they really worn them long enough for any hearing re-wiring growth to take place?

To help you understand the complex task which may need to take place, perhaps it would help to have a brief knowledge of the inner ear’s importance and why we would emphasize appreciating and guarding this wonderful gift. It simply will not repair or heal itself, unlike our skin which heals from cuts, etc.

For a moment, let’s compare the eye receptors to that of the ear. While millions of photo receptors participle with the retina, loss of 1000 would hardly go noticed, while losing 1000 sensory cells in the ear would lead to hearing loss.

Even if a new cell was to come into existence in an adult it would have to be rewired to the myriad of fibers that connect deep into the brain. Those cells would have to migrate outward past the inner ear cells through all of the supporting cells and find the correct hookups and precise rows of outer hair cells. Even if we successful in achieving re-growth, considerable work would have to take place in learning how to promote correct rewiring with the central neurons system.

The process would be more challenging than learning a foreign language as an adult.

Fortunately, rewiring the brain using the same pathways with use of a hearing aid is much quicker and effective in accomplishing this miracle of hearing for many.

This amazing system, the hearing Organ of Corti, can reconstruct our three dimensional world of sound to be able to hear the twig break and being able to figure out its specific location. The analysis of speech appears to take place in the parts of the brain that are only highly developed in man.

Fortunately today we live in a time where we have developed sophisticated customized hearing instrumentation using the most elaborate and finest sciences, many of them working together to bring us this hearing technology.

Today through the advancement of hearing science in the area of multi channel speech mapping, we now have highly advanced miniature custom hearing aid automatic computer processors able to recreate and redeliver the beauty and world of sound back into an intricately fine tuned and appreciated hearing experience.

There is now better technology and better understanding for the sensitive hearing care needs of each individual. This is coupled with the proper usage of corrective sound prescription practice listening therapy directly to (you guessed it) the inside of the ear so that the Organ of Corti can receive its vital needed watering.

This new understanding of hearing physical therapy - keeping the hair cells stimulated as needed by amplification technology from your own personal custom daily remapping - will be key to preserving the hearing you have left and keep the user’s brain hearing memory intact for as long as possible, providing our listener these miracles of sounds quality of life the way in which it was originally designed.

These hearing instruments are light weight and for some hardly noticeable at all.

I am excited and grateful that this information is now available to you and hope that it will serve as a better guide to the right road of your new successful hearing possibility.