What people like Michael Chorost have long-suspected appears to be true: hearing in stereo is good for your health. A study by the Indiana University School of Medicine found “cochlear implants in both ears significantly improve quality of life in patients with profound hearing loss and that the cost of the second implant is offset by its benefits.” Researchers found that bilateral implants helped people hear regular conversational speech as well as speech in noisy environments better than those with just one implant.
"We didn't know that cognitive skills and emotional issues would so significantly improve with the implantation of a second cochlear device,” said senior study author Richard Miyamoto, M.D., Arilla Spence DeVault Professor and chairman of the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery. “In addition to the physiological improvements we saw in patients who had bilateral implants, we found that patients were able to function better in noisy environments and definitely felt better about themselves."
The authors of the study, which appeared in the May issue of the Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery journal said they hope their findings will encourage insurance companies to justify coverage of a second implant. Currently regular insurance most often covers the cost of only one implant. Michael Chorost, author of Rebuit: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human, recently documented his experience getting a second hearing aid in The Journal of Life Sciences. He had successfully lobbied his insurance company, Aetna, to change its policy to offer coverage for bi-lateral implants. And his quality of life instantly improved:
And then I tried music. I started with Debussy's Clair de lune, a slow, reflective piece played by an oboe and a harp. I could feel the new ear feeding me its version of the soundstream. It didn't sound as limpid and clear as the left, but it was giving me music, mirroring the left. Mirroring? Actually, no, I realized. The headphones were shifting the sound intensities back adn forth between them, playingoff of each other.
Stereo.
And I was caught up in it: following the countours of the piece, its wholeness, its proving of the emotional resonances of sound; a moonlit glade with the stars wheeling overhead.
"It sounds lovely," I breathed.
Wow.
It held my attention the way a good story does. I listened to it three more times, once with only the right, once only with the left, then once with both again. Disassembling and reassembling the piece.
I realized that listening to music with one ear is essentially pointless. Music reaches into you and works on your brain. To do that, it needs to work on all of the brain. Hearing music with only one ear engages on half of the brain. Hearing Clair de lune with two ears was like the difference between a live and a dead body: the form was the same, but the experience was oh so different....
It's like cupping water with two hands instead of one. You can do it with one. But you get much, much more with two. My brain, like everyone else's, was designed to work with two ears. Being bilateral gives me a fresh chance, after 30 years, to hear the world whole and full.
Michael Chorost has seen a difference that I've experienced with and without my hearing aids. My hearing in my right ear is not bad enough to require a cochlear implant, but my left ear is pretty bad. Even with the most powerful hearing aid, I can't understand regualr converation or use the phone with my left ear alone. But I have found that even its diminished capacity provides an extremely important boost to my hearing and well being. My right ear, with good amplificatino, gets speech and the telephone pretty well on its own. You would think I wouldn't need that second, less-effective aid on the left side. But when I take out my left hearing aid, I start to experience many of the limitations Michael Chorost experienced: I can't hear where sounds are coming from, and I can't hear speech as exactly as when I'm using the left hearing aid with my right. Using only one ear is very disorienting. It makes me anxious. I've realized the left hearing aid provides the locational cues as well as the little extra hearing assistance that can make all the difference in comprehension as well as my ability to feel relaxed in my environment, rather than anxious and disoriented. Hearing in stereo really does make a huge difference in my ability to "hear the world whole and full."
Posted by David at 04:26 PM on Jun 5, 2008 in COCHLEAR IMPLANTS
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Amen! I, too, have bilateral cochlear implants and benefit greatly having "two ears." It just gets better and better, especially with music, direction, and background noises. Comprehension has improved for me, as well, reducing my stress level.
Regards, Laurie
