Using Music to Improve Hearing

At the age of 60 my hearing is excellent. In recent years my hearing has improved, defying the accepted claim that hearing deteriorates with age. I would like to share some of the strategies I have used over the years to holistically improve my hearing, including listening to and creating music, as well as listening to the calls of birds.Last year I had a long phone conversation with my cousin, who is a retired audiologist. She has a degree in biological science from the University of Sydney before obtaining a qualification in audiology (also in Sydney). She worked for several decades measuring peoples hearing and prescribing hearing aids. I asked her about sound warfare, which she had never heard of.

I also asked her about music and she told me that I could buy musicians' earplugs that suppressed particular frequencies. I told her I didn't want to buy them but asked which companies made them. She listed 6 that she could remember, including Amplifon and Siemens. Today I checked out the Amplifon websites (including their Facebook site and YouTube sites) and also performed what they call a free online hearing test. After the test they wanted my name and email to send me a report (and tell me what to do next). I did not submit it.

From Wikipedia I gathered that Amplifon was established in 1950 by a British spy by the name of Algernon Charles Holland, a member of British Special Forces and later a major in the Royal Corps of Signals. His daughter is described on Wikipedia as a billionaire businesswoman. She inherited her fathers company and is the current boss of Amplifon.

I did the Amplifon hearing test a few times, but only the Australian version, which features men and women speaking in Australian accents in different noisy environments. The tests are fatally flawed and are really clumsy tests of comprehension, rather than accurate measures of hearing. They provide, however, valuable insights into the hearing aid industry.

The perception and mental analysis of and response to sound is complex and obviously involves both the ears and brain. Many parts of the brain are involved as has been known for a long time. Back in the mid-nineteenth the French craniometrist and anatomist Paul Broca identified a localised region in the inferior region of the precentral gyrus of the Frontal Lobe as vital for speech generation. This is now known as Brocas Area. It is almost always located on the left side of the brain (even in left-handed and ambidextrous people). Strokes affecting Broca's Area prevent the generation of speech, though comprehension is unaffected. This is because comprehension is mediated by a different part of the brain - Wernickes Area - located at the juncture of the Temporal Lobe and Parietal Lobe near the angular gyrus, also in the left hemisphere.

It has been reported that functional MRI scans of multilingual people show that both the left and right hemispheres area are activated during speech and listening. Music perception and generation also involves both sides of the brain. This is most obvious when left and right limbs are moved in time to music (playing or in response to music). All voluntary movement involves neural circuits in the precentral gyrus of the Frontal Lobe (the Motor Cortex).

There is also distribution of processing of other parameters and aspects of music, including melody, harmony, timbre and rhythm. Some involve the left hemisphere more than the right, though it is true that the right hemisphere is generally more involved in music processing than the left.

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