Comparing eyeglasses to CI. Help me understand.

[MintyOreo]

No, those simulations don't accurately reflect what's actually heard -- several people have posted their own experiences, having heard naturally until recently and receiving CIs, they have a basis for comparison. They often say that the sound becomes very much like sound they remember. The brain does amazing things with even primitive tools. We don't know what the sound experience is like for a prelingually deaf person who obtains a CI late or for a prelingually deaf 1 or 2 year old who don't have memory of sound. But my daughter can hear music on a car radio and later sing a fairly accurate rendition, and can differentiate piano notes right next to each other on a keyboard. These things would be far from possible if those simulations were accurate.

Fair enough. Like I said, I am not an expert on CIs. I'm told that those simulations are awful scary sounding, so I'm happy that they aren't accurate

 

[green427]

Fair enough. Like I said, I am not an expert on CIs. I'm told that those simulations are awful scary sounding, so I'm happy that they aren't accurate

I wore HA's for many years until I got the CI's. In the beginning, the CI's sounds were really bizarre, everything sounded like squeaks & chirps, and it drove me crazy until about 4 map adjustments later, then it started to sound more like what I heard with the HA's. After 6 months, everything sounds much more natural. Now I hear too much....

Even though my sound recognition is now about 80% of a normal hearing person's, I still have trouble with speech discrimination, especially when people talk fast or mumble. I can have one person stand behind me and understand that person 100%, and have another and not understand a thing he says. This is a result of my brain being mapped around what limited hearing I had with the HA's. When you introduce a CI to a brain that has already been 'mapped' a certain way, it takes much longer to adapt.

This is why most teenagers today tend to do well after receiving their CI's at a very young age. Then again, this is a whole 'nother subject that gets folks riled up, so I will stop right there.

When I want to hear, I put the CI's on. When I don't want to hear, they stay off. I can function either way.

 

[Jane B.]

What I have long wondered is why are some making such a big deal of if the sound from a CI is the same as a "hearing person"? Isn't the main point of a CI the communication it can make possible whether it sounds the same or not?

I did the quote below more to let others that come along after to know where I had read to at the time I am doing this posting than anything else.

I wore HA's for many years until I got the CI's. In the beginning, the CI's sounds were really bizarre, everything sounded like squeaks & chirps, and it drove me crazy until about 4 map adjustments later, then it started to sound more like what I heard with the HA's. After 6 months, everything sounds much more natural. Now I hear too much....

Even though my sound recognition is now about 80% of a normal hearing person's, I still have trouble with speech discrimination, especially when people talk fast or mumble. I can have one person stand behind me and understand that person 100%, and have another and not understand a thing he says. This is a result of my brain being mapped around what limited hearing I had with the HA's. When you introduce a CI to a brain that has already been 'mapped' a certain way, it takes much longer to adapt.

This is why most teenagers today tend to do well after receiving their CI's at a very young age. Then again, this is a whole 'nother subject that gets folks riled up, so I will stop right there.

When I want to hear, I put the CI's on. When I don't want to hear, they stay off. I can function either way.

 

[deafdyke]

sound from a CI is the same as a "hearing person"?

If the sound from a CI is the same as a hearing person's hearing, then how come they have CI MEMs, which are suppposed to more closely mimic nautral hearing person hearing?

 

[LoveBlue]

If the sound from a CI is the same as a hearing person's hearing, then how come they have CI MEMs, which are suppposed to more closely mimic nautral hearing person hearing?

Who are you quoting?

 

[Cloggy]

Cloggy,your daughter cannot hear like a hearing person. She does well with the hearing she has, but it is NOT hearing person hearing. Not by a MILE. If you could hear what she hears, you'd be all "what the eff?"

You have no clue....
I'm sitting next to her... practising Norwegian words that are similar in sound.. "gjerde, gjette, gjøre, gjerne, gjennom, gjorde"... No problem....

"Not by a MILE." ... you're so wrong...
More like "close to a centimeter.."

You have no clue...

 

[Cloggy]

Aren't there online simulators that show what it's like to hear out of a CI? My (Hearing) brother tried one, and he was freaked out. He tried this one, and he was like "What the heck?!?" (It was funny to watch his facial expressions, haha Since then, everytime someone mentions a CI around him, he gets that same WTH look on his face )

Simulations

*backs out of the CI conversation*

Yes...
and they are bad... A simulation of sound reproduced by fewer and fewer channels...
What the simulation does not take into account is... the brain...

I was shocked by the simulations as well, because if this would be how Lotte was hearing... she wouldn't understand half of what we say to her..
She understands... so simulating CI by "just" putting the sound through 22 channels is not enough...

 

[Cloggy]

If the sound from a CI is the same as a hearing person's hearing, then how come they have CI MEMs, which are suppposed to more closely mimic nautral hearing person hearing?

Huh... Never heard of MEM's

 

[green427]

You have no clue....
I'm sitting next to her... practising Norwegian words that are similar in sound.. "gjerde, gjette, gjøre, gjerne, gjennom, gjorde"... No problem....

"Not by a MILE." ... you're so wrong...
More like "close to a centimeter.."

You have no clue...

Wow, she really is doing well. Doing better than I am. Congrats.

 

[Jane B.]

What I have long wondered is why are some making such a big deal of if the sound from a CI is the same as a "hearing person"? Isn't the main point of a CI the communication it can make possible whether it sounds the same or not?

If the sound from a CI is the same as a hearing person's hearing, then how come they have CI MEMs, which are suppposed to more closely mimic nautral hearing person hearing?

Who are you quoting?

LoveBlue
I think what deafdyke quoted may have been from my post above but only using part of what I said.

My point was why would it be such an issue if something sounded the same to someone with a CI and a "hearing person" if they both understood what was being communicated. Isn't the point of getting the CI the communication NOT whether it sounds the same or not?

I am still not sure I have found a way to express this idea in an understandable way. Another way I just thought of saying it is: If someone with a CI and a hearing person hear the same announcement and both understand what was said why would it be a problem that what the two hear does not sound the same to both? For that matter I doubt that the same announcement would sound the same to two different hearing people.

 

[AlleyCat]

I suspect only someone who is late-deafened would be able to share with us the differences between normal hearing and CI-aided hearing or HA-aided hearing. When I had my CI evaluation several years ago, I was told by my CI audiologist that sounds would be very mechanical in comparison to normal hearing. What that really would sound like, I don't know. With my HAs, nothing sounds mechanical (unless it's supposed to, like an engine!) Anyways, I am not saying at all that CI-aided hearing is a bad thing, but with all that I have read on this forum with what CI-aided people (especially late-deafened) have posted, I think there has been a general consensus that CI-aided hearing does sound very different from normal hearing; that may be what DD was getting at.

 

[CSign]

I suspect only someone who is late-deafened would be able to share with us the differences between normal hearing and CI-aided hearing or HA-aided hearing. When I had my CI evaluation several years ago, I was told by my CI audiologist that sounds would be very mechanical in comparison to normal hearing. What that really would sound like, I don't know. With my HAs, nothing sounds mechanical (unless it's supposed to, like an engine!) Anyways, I am not saying at all that CI-aided hearing is a bad thing, but with all that I have read on this forum with what CI-aided people (especially late-deafened) have posted, I think there has been a general consensus that CI-aided hearing does sound very different from normal hearing; that may be what DD was getting at.

I think what JaneB was getting at was how it sounds exactly is not quite as important as whether or not the message was understood and that it provides sufficient benefit to communicate with those who use spoken language.

 

[Frisky Feline]

yeah half borgs have been spreadig all over the earth.

 

[AlleyCat]

I think what JaneB was getting at was how it sounds exactly is not quite as important as whether or not the message was understood and that it provides sufficient benefit to communicate with those who use spoken language.

Right, I understand. My response was more directed to the posts above Jane's regarding what CI sounds sound like.

 

[naisho]

What I have long wondered is why are some making such a big deal of if the sound from a CI is the same as a "hearing person"? Isn't the main point of a CI the communication it can make possible whether it sounds the same or not?

I did the quote below more to let others that come along after to know where I had read to at the time I am doing this posting than anything else.

CI comparisons to reality and criticisms of their sounds and quality usually comes from those who are late deafened. For example, Rush Limbaugh has said to an extent that it wasn't the same as he expected. There was another girl, a popular singer, but the name escapes me at this moment.

If he's paying the $$, you could say it's his money and his review of his purchase. Everyone's allowed to have an opinion. Whether their opinions affect a reader or audience or not is a different situation.

I suspect most children would not notice what real hearing is like if they have never experienced it. It is only an important aspect to the later-deafened who may have been hoping for their hearing restored.

 

[Jane B.]

I think what JaneB was getting at was how it sounds exactly is not quite as important as whether or not the message was understood and that it provides sufficient benefit to communicate with those who use spoken language.

You got my point! And probably phrased it better than I did.

 

[naisho]

Oh, I found her (the singer). It was the rapper Foxy Brown.

Before anyone questions me, here are my sources. I originally saw both of them mentioned on TV, so had to dig out where it was.
I can't find an article that talks about Foxy going to speech therapy and re-do her career post-op, that "it wasn't easy" for her to learn to sing again. Something along those lines. It was on TV.

Foxy
================
http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20144683,00.html

'I've Been Deaf for Four Months'
In May, Rapper Foxy Brown Awoke to Find She Could No Longer Hear. At All. Now, for the First Time, She Talks About the Condition That Sidelined Her Career and Tested Her Faith
October 24, 2005 Vol. 64 No. 17


What Foxy Brown remembers most about the morning of May 23 is the eerie quiet. The night before, the rapper had fallen asleep with the television blaring, but when she got up, no sound seemed to be coming from it. "I pressed the volume to maybe 60. Nothing," says Brown. "I ran outside to my truck and honked the horn. Nothing. I ran back inside and dialed a number on the phone. Nothing. Then I started breaking down in tears and screaming and I couldn't even hear myself scream. That's when I knew there was a problem."

Three days later Brown was diagnosed with severe sudden sensorineural hearing loss, a little-understood condition that affects one in 10,000 people without warning, often as the result of a viral infection. Most suffer loss in only one ear and, when treated early, the condition can be reversible. But Brown has lost her hearing in both ears and has, so far, not responded well to treatment. "Her case is severe," says Dr. Anil Lalwani, an otologist whom Brown has consulted. "In only 1 or 2 percent of the cases are both ears affected." For months Brown tried to hide the loss, hoping medication and surgery might restore it. Now, as she weighs further options, she is speaking out for the first time. "I have been deaf for four months," says the 26-year-old Brown, whose real name is Inga Marchand. She talked to PEOPLE's Sharon Cotliar about her regret that she didn't act sooner when she felt her hearing "slipping away" and her hope that speaking out will help others.

There were signs for a few days before. My phone would be ringing and my Blackberry would be going off and people would be "Yo, Foxy, your Blackberry." And I'd hear it. It would be a delayed reaction but I'd still hear it. One day I was in the studio, putting the finishing touches on my fourth album, Black Roses, and my friend [and Def Jam Records president] Jay-Z walked in to approve the mix. As soon as he heard it he was like, "Yo, what's that? Does this sound normal to you, Inga?" I was like, "Of course it does. What do you mean?" Then he told me, "Baby Girl, we have a problem because this is ridiculously loud. I could never put this on the radio."

At first I just thought Jay was giving me a hard time. But the next day, he and I did an interview at a radio station. I remember conversing with the on-air personality. I was hearing her fine, but the minute I had to take callers, I couldn't hear them. I would say, "What are they saying?" It was embarrassing, because the people in the studio were looking at me like, "What do you mean? Don't you hear them? This is crazy loud." I said, "No, turn them up." But they couldn't turn it up any higher.

The next day, I was at a photo shoot. I was hearing the music fine. I said to myself, "Yesterday I wasn't hearing the phone, but today I'm hearing the music, so maybe this hearing loss is from a flight."

My mom's sister passed away the morning after the shoot, I remember hearing my mom and aunts downstairs in the living room, crying hysterically. And I got on the phone to call a couple of people. But when we went to the funeral parlor, I had a problem hearing the funeral director explaining the arrangements.

All along I'm feeling my hearing going slowly, but I'm thinking, God would never do this. This can never happen to me. I'm perfectly healthy, I'm 26 years old, I'm young and people just don't go deaf overnight.

The morning of the funeral, I woke up and I couldn't hear anything. Not the TV, not my car horn, not the dial tone on the phone. Of course I still had to go to the funeral. I sat in the front row and I couldn't hear the choir. Jay-Z was there and I said, "Jay, I think I'm deaf." He was like, "You can't be deaf." But I knew. I said, "Monday morning, we need to find a doctor."

The initial doctor I went to told me that if I had attacked the problem when I first realized my hearing was going, I probably would have been able to heal it immediately, but because I waited for about a week and continued to work and work and put pressure on my ear, that's what really damaged it.

He put me on a steroid called Prednisone and an antiviral medicine. I went home with the false hope that taking this medication would work.

After two weeks on the drugs, none of my hearing came back. I thought, I'm not telling anybody this. I'm going to keep this a secret. I'm going to try to go on normally. I'm going to pretend I can hear.

So for a few weeks I was reading lips. I was pretending that I can hear but I'm speaking really loudly so that didn't earn me any cool points. People would see me in the street and say, 'Foxy, we love you," and I wouldn't hear them, and they would think I was being disrespectful.

One of my closest friends is Naomi Campbell. She kept calling and saying "Call me," and instead I would e-mail her. Finally she was like, "Inga, what's wrong? Why don't you call me?" And I had to tell her I couldn't hear her over the phone. She freaked out. She said, "I'm coming to New York and we have to fix this." So she did some research and found me another specialist. I saw her June 8. The doctor told me I had severe damage to my ears and that I needed surgery right away. Her words to me were, "If you ever want to hear again, we need to do this surgery." I said, "On both ears?" She said yes.

Two days later I went to the hospital. The doctor wanted to go in and patch possible leaks in the inner ear that could have been the cause for the hearing loss. That was the last thing I had, that surgery. Before the surgery, my hearing was zero. After the surgery, it went up 20 percent. So at first I was thinking, "Wow, maybe next week it will be 40 percent and after that it will be 60." But it didn't work like that. It remained a little over 20 percent, which really wasn't that much of a difference.

So now my issue was, "What do I tell the record company? What do I tell Jay? What do I tell my fans?" I gotta tell you, when you go through a crisis, you really see who is there for you. Without mentioning any names, a lot of people that I thought would be there through thick and thin have completely disappeared. Because I couldn't hear, I was no longer useful to them. I couldn't put a record out. So it was basically like, "Okay, we will see you when you get better,"

But that only made me stronger. I decided when, they see me, I'm going to be the same Foxy, looking head to toe gorgeous. I'm going to try to be normal—even though every night I would cry myself to sleep. Every morning I would get up and try to look my best and try to feel my best.

I know God is working on me. I'm on a personal journey. I believe God wants to be the only voice I hear right now. Every day I pray for an answer. I don't want to come away from this not having learned God's lesson.

The doctors aren't saying that it's definite that I won't hear again. This is another reason I am speaking out. I believe there's a doctor somewhere—it could be on the outskirts of Wisconsin or Iowa—who could say, "I know exactly what this girl needs."

They say I may be able to hear with a [cochlear] implant. [An implant would give 'much more auditory information,' says Dr. Lalwani. 'It would let her use a telephone, and it maybe sufficient for her to get tonality back and be a musician.'] I know it will be an uphill battle. For now I am taking a break. But I definitely will be back. I still write. I write the best music when I'm going through pain. Sometimes I think, "What if I don't get my hearing back?" But then a second later I think God loves me. He will make a way. I know I will be all right. I'm not Foxy Brown right now. I'm Inga Marchand. I'm just a girl that wants to get better.

Rush
================
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2011/03/18/questions_on_the_host_s_hearing
Questions on the Host's Hearing - March 18, 2011

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Evan in West Coxsackie, New York, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hey. I'm just wondering, when you listen to music with your hearing aid, how's it sound?

RUSH: Music?

CALLER: Yeah, like if you're listening to music on an iPad or something?

RUSH: Well, not very good. I cannot listen to music that I've never heard before and identify the melody.

CALLER: Oh.

RUSH: I have a cochlear implant. It doesn't have nearly the sensitivity of the human ear, it's not even close.

CALLER: I was just wondering.

RUSH: Like violins or strings sound like fingernails on a chalkboard to me.

CALLER: Oh, well, I was just wondering.

RUSH: What I have to do, I can still listen to music, but it has to be music that I knew and that I've heard before I lost my hearing. And what happens is that my brain, fertile mind, provides the melody. I actually am not hearing the melody, and the way I can prove this to you, sometimes it will take me, even a song that I know, it will take me 30 seconds to identify it if I don't know what it is. Now, if I'm playing a song off iTunes and the title is there and it starts then I can spot it from the middle, but if I'm listening to a song from the beginning, and I don't know what it is, it sometimes can take me 30 seconds to recognize it, if I knew it before. But the quality of music that I hear is less than AM radio, in terms of fidelity. I can turn the bass up on an amplifier and I don't hear any difference at all. I can feel the floor vibrate, but I don't hear any more bass. I can turn highs up and I can hear the difference in the highs, but on the low end I actually cannot -- (interruption) I'm getting a note here that says: "You're not missing anything. There aren't any melodies in music today." (laughing) At any rate, you adapt to it. I've adapted.

The worst part of my hearing is being in a crowd. Like right now, I hear myself as well as I heard myself when I could hear. If I'm talking to one other person in a quiet room I can comprehend 90-95% of what they say depending on how fast they're speaking. There are some words that sound alike. But you add room noise, like if Kathryn and I are watching TV and she wants to talk to me about what we're watching, I have to hit pause or the mute 'cause I cannot hear what she's saying. Even if she's sitting two feet away I will not hear as long as there are other noises there. Any room noise when added to other room noise is gonna be louder than the one voice that I'm trying to hear. I've got the implant on my left side so if we go out in a public place, anybody on my right side, it's hopeless. I'll have to literally turn to them, and sometimes as I turn to them they turn with me. They don't know what I'm doing so we'll do pirouettes 'til I finally say, "No, you stay where you are. I'm trying to position my ear so I can hear you."

The way I look at this, though, because when I tell these stories, "Oh, that's really horrible." No, it's not. 'Cause if you look at the timeline of humanity, however long it is, 10,000 years, a million, billion, whatever the number is, my little time on it is not much larger than a grain of sand. And yet I happen to lose my hearing at the same time technology had evolved to the point where cochlear implants had been invented. If I had lost my hearing 15 years ago, it would have meant the end of my career. I would not have been able to hear. And the doctor said you might think that you could speak normally just by virtue of memory and feel, the way voice feels when you speak, but eventually your speech would deteriorate, and it would sound to people as though you had a speech defect. It would just be automatic no matter how good you are, no matter how professional you are at it. So that's really fortunate. It's almost miraculous that my being afflicted with this autoimmune disease happens to coincide with technology. Some call it divine intervention. Some call it the age of miracles. We're all one way or another part of this age of miracles.

Music is the one thing that I miss, but you know what else? This is another thing. Compatibility with other people in normal circumstances takes a big hit. For example, my most comfortable is sheer quiet now. The ringing of a phone or I'll be sitting in my library and there will be a noise. I remember we had been working on the alarm system, and I hadn't been told we were working on the alarm system and every 30 seconds something in the room would beep. I said, "Oh, my gosh, it that the smoker detector, what the hell?" I'd have to call somebody in the office and say, "Where is this coming from?" because I couldn't tell where sound was coming from and I had no idea what it was. One time the phone was left off the hook and there was street noise, it was the phone at the gate. And it was street noise, but it didn't sound like street noise to me. I don't even remember what it sounded like, but I couldn't pinpoint what it was. The phone was still on the hook but the mute button on the speakerphone was off so I had no idea where it was coming from. I had to call somebody in and say, "What is this, where's it coming from?" 'Cause you always worry about something blowing up when there's a sound that you don't know.

But I crave silence, blessed silence because anything other than speech is just noise. It is irritating noise. Well, most people go crazy in quiet environments. They don't like it. Most people love having the TV on in the background or some sort of sound or other. It irritates me. It irritates the heck out of me because it's just noise and I can't identify it. I know if it's noise on TV, but I can't tell you what somebody's saying. I have to have closed-captioning to understand everything being said in a TV program, particularly if there's a music soundtrack. And very few people use closed-captioning. It distracts them. Me, I need it. (interruption) No, I'm not just getting old and cranky, Snerdley. And going in public to a restaurant is, depending on the place, it is impossible. It literally can be impossible to have a conversation except with anybody on the left, and at some places I have to get within an inch of what they're saying to be able to comprehend. I hear everything, but making sense of it…

See, the human ear has 35,000 hair cells in each ear. They're microscopic. But they still are different sizes and widths, lengths, and they vibrate. When they sense noise, sound, whatever, they start the whole process of energy through the audial nerve. Well, the autoimmune system killed all 35,000 hair cells in both ears, so they're laying down. They're still in there, but they're laying down. Cochlear implant, I've got eight electrodes, and I'm actually now down to six because two of them were causing facial tics when the volume got too high. My eyes were closing, I looked spastic. I had to deactivate two of those electrodes, so I'm down to six. So I've got six manmade bionic electrodes trying to do the job of 35,000 or 70,000 hair cells in terms of frequency response and all that, and there's no way, it just can't be done. (interruption) No, the technology has not improved. Now what has improved is, like this Esteem thing that we talk about, if you have residual hearing, that's miraculous. The hardware hasn't changed. There are some software improvements.

For example, with the implant I have there's a program called High Res, which activates 20 electrodes. But it doesn't work for me. Everybody is different. They turn on those 20 electrodes -- I got 'em in there -- you turn on the 20 and everybody sounds like the chipmunks to me. It's worse. And that's the digital. I'm using the analog. Everybody that has one of these things has a different experience. Everybody says you need to get one on your right side now. I kept the right side clear because there might have been a cure for these dead hair cells. Now I've been told there won't be. So if I get an implant on the right side that would solve some of the spatial stuff and it would enable me to hear people on my right side if I'm in a public place or what have you. Music, it's amazing what the memory can do when I'm listening to music that I love, that I've known. In fact, I can create the music without evening hearing it. Your memory, your mind can do that.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Look, folks, don't get the wrong idea. Having a cochlear implant has a lot of positives. I was out playing golf the other day with a bunch of guys, and there was a loudmouth crow in a palm tree right on the tee box, no more than ten feet above us. The thing was cawing like crazy. You just wanted to grab something and throw it at the damn bird to shut up, and it was screwing everybody's tee shots off. I mean, you can't concentrate. The guys would swing and right at the moment of impact, "CAWWW!" and you could just see the effect.

All I did was take my implant off, gently place it on the ground, and total silence. No distractions whatsoever. However, I do have tinnitus (some people say tinn-i-tus) in my right ear -- which, in my case, I constantly hear Gregorian chants. That's the noise in my right ear, but I've got so used to it I don't hear it unless I stop to focus on it, but it's always there. I always think I'm in touch with God. Gregorian chants are constantly going off in my right ear.

END TRANSCRIPT

 

[soutthpaw]

OMG!!! I actually agree with Rush on something...
Very good description of music listening.. As I tell people, CI are designed for listening to one on one, face to face conversation in a quiet controlled environment and usually work quite well for that. however, for other situations the often fail miserably. not really the fault of the CI, cuz not what it was designed for but this another example of how CI is not the same as normal hearing

 

[TXgolfer]

Cloggy,your daughter cannot hear like a hearing person. She does well with the hearing she has, but it is NOT hearing person hearing. Not by a MILE. If you could hear what she hears, you'd be all "what the eff?"

I don't think so....I hear quite clearly through my hearing aid. I imagine a CI would be much better than that. Having had perfect hearing for 20+ years and now having almost no hearing without an aid I am a pretty good judge.

I might add saying "fake hearing" is very rude and inflammatory. Again....this is Alldeaf.....a place for all of us.