Thoughts on Restoring Hearing

The issue of recovering hearing is a necessarily sensitive one. For those that have had a hearing loss for only a few years, it might be a viable idea — after several decades of hearing normally, it can be hard (if not downright impossible) to adjust to hearing less. In this case, I can see where TRPA1 would be highly advantageous — it would restore that person’s hearing to a state at (or at least closer to) their previous hearing levels. It would also be helpful, as one of the articles I linked to on TRPA1 points out, to restore hearing lost at, say, concerts.

However, it’s important to keep in mind that all these benefits are highlighted for someone who has only lost some of their normal hearing and has had previous experience with normal hearing. I’m not that kind of person — I was born with a 70dB loss in both ears and have had to live with that all my life. I don’t have any idea what “normal” hearing sounds like, nor have I ever really had any inclination towards finding out. This is probably why my experience with the Oticon Synchro hearing aids didn’t go so well: those aids were designed to attempt to mimic some of the attributes of a normal hearing experience. Having never experienced that type of hearing, it made little sense to try and mimic those attributes for me — I’m used to hearing aids that have the capacity to amplify and selectively modify sound. I’m also used to aids that do this task in a relatively noticeable manner. The Synchro made these adjustments in a subtler way, and never quite adapted itself to the situation at hand correctly.
But I digress. TRPA1 is intended to restore nerve endings that conduct sounds through the ear and into the brain, thus restoring some measure of hearing for a particular individual. Not only am I highly wary of such a process, I am skeptical as to whether it would do me one whit of good. Certainly, some of my hearing might be restored through such a process, but how much? Enough is unknown about exactly what happened to cause my loss that this might not do anything at all. “But it’s worth a try,” some might say, “better you try and nothing happens than never try and find out later that it would have helped significantly.” The issue isn’t whether it would or wouldn’t help; rather, the issue is whether I would be able to adapt to whatever changes were made as a result of such treatment. The answer to this is naturally in the affirmative. In that case, the question becomes whether such a thing would be something I would want to do. The answer to that is no.

This is not closed-mindedness. You can’t simply throw out one method of hearing that I’ve been used to for twenty-one years and replace it with something completely different. In some ways, I’m the exact opposite of the person who had hearing, then lost it, except that the difference is much sharper: I’m used to having precise control over my ability to hear or not hear. Take away that control, and what happens? I may be better off, and perhaps not so much effort would be required to tune any hearing aids that I would still require after such therapy, but I lose the ability to be picky. This sounds like a stupid quip, but consider the advantages: at the moment, I can allow these aids to selectively filter out certain noises and sounds in a specific environment, adapt to high-noise environments with the flick of a switch to reduce volume, and do any host of other things to allow less stress on my hearing. People who have normal hearing can certainly exercise the idea of selective hearing, but they can’t block out the background noise completely — it’s still there. With hearing aids, the background noise isn’t there at all because it’s being filtered out before it ever reaches the ear.

So this is a somewhat lengthy thought process, but it boils down to this: when someone gets used to something and uses it for a long time, you can’t simply change it. That has such profound philosophical, psychological, and emotional impacts that it can often do more damage than simply keeping things the way they are. That’s my justification, long-winded as it may be.

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