3-D Hearing Aid

Reported May 2005

IRVING, Calif. (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- About 30 million Americans have some form of hearing loss. Many complain about hearing aids, saying they produce poor sound quality, making conversations difficult and frustrating. Now, hearing scientists are fine tuning devices to help dramatically improve what patients hear.

Imagine a world of silence. Jackie Harding knows that world.

"I'm totally deaf," she says. A cochlear implant helped Harding hear, but not much. "I would say most of the time it does not sound like music as I remember it."

Now audiologists are adding dimension to the flat sound quality in cochlear implants.

Hearing scientist Fan-Gang Zeng, Ph.D., of University of California, Irvine, says, "The research we're conducting will have significant impact on quality of life for cochlear implant users."

Current cochlear implants don't separate one instrument or voice from another, and music that should sound normal sounds muffled. So researchers added the FM signal you use to tune in your favorite radio station. FM, or frequency modulation, enhances voice and music recognition.

Implants now capture only the bulk features of sound -- the AM information, or amplitude. Researchers are finding new ways to capture finer sound detail -- the FM information.

Harding is using this new technology and says, "I can differentiate between the lower tones and the higher tones better than I did." Giving more dimension to sound again.

This new technology should be available to patients within the next two years and can be applied to new and existing hearing aids and cochlear implants.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

Fan-Gang Zeng, Ph.D.
Acoustics
Director of Hearing and Speech Lab
University of California at Irvine
Irvine, California
(949) 824-1539
fzeng@uci.edu

Tom Vasich
PAO
(949) 824-6455
tmvasich@uci.edu


Click here to watch the video.

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