BERKELEY, Calif., Jan. 9 (UPI) — Studies suggest just 10 percent of those who could benefit from a hearing aid actually wear one regularly. That number could be higher, researchers say, if scientists are able to incorporate newly understood components of a songbird’s hearing abilities into a new and improved device.
Sometimes, a person’s hearing has declined so gradually, they don’t notice the loss — or it’s so slight they’d just rather go without help. For others, the devices are simply too expensive. Traditional hearing aids can cost upwards of $6,000.
But the most common complaint from those who stand to benefit from hearing aids, (yet forego their use), is they are just too painful and unhelpful in places like concert halls, noisy restaurants and the like.
“In a crowded place, it can be very difficult to follow a conversation even if you don’t have hearing deficits,” University of California, Berkeley neuroscientist Frederic Theunissen explained in a recent news release. “That situation can be terrible for a person wearing a hearing aid, which amplifies everything.”
The brain is capable of concentrating on the correct sounds as they’re filtered by the human ear — naturally honing in on a friend’s voice across the dinner table while tuning out the jazz band at the back of the restaurant. But hearing aids complicate this process.
Songbirds, however, may offer a solution, researchers say.
“We were inspired by the biology of hearing,” Theunissen said. “How does the brain do it?”
To find out, researchers took an in-depth look — not at the human brain but the action-packed noggin of a songbird. Picking out the call of a mate in a crowded forest, after all, is much more biologically vital than hearing one’s friend drone on about reality TV.
Scientists were able to isolate the neurons that allow songbirds to signal in on the songs of their mates, picking them out among a dozen or so other calls, regardless of surrounding volume. Researchers have since translated that neural process into an algorithm — one they say could be incorporated into the next generation of hearing aids.
While that application process will be the work of other scientists, Theunissen and his colleagues are nonetheless pleased with their contribution.
“We are a lab doing basic science,” he says. “There is a purist pleasure in solving problems, but also an excitement that there are real problems to be solved.”
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