I understand what you mean!!
Umm. What I had in mind were the last six highest pitched keys on the piano. I had no problems hearing lower fequencies but higher ones were difficult for me to hear.She probably has way better low frequency hearing and probably has more powerful HAs than you. I could never hear enough to use the phone but at this point it doesn't matter anymore with the internet.
From what my audi told me, the electrodes themselves stimulate certain parts of the cochlea, but you can also redirect them to other adjacent electrodes if one or more are turned off.
In other words, the electrodes that have been turned off (in my case, 6 high frequency electrodes) are programmed to stimulate the low and middle frequency electrodes. This means that instead of the low and middle frequency electrodes only stimulating these frequencies, they also stimulate the areas of the cochlea that produce high frequencies. If I remember correctly, this is called "pairing."
My audi also said I was lucky everything worked out as well as it did in the end because I could have ended up with worse hearing/speech discrimination and/or muddied/distorted sound.
Fortunately for me, the opposite was true. Everything I hear (speech, environmental sounds, music) is as clear as a bell and exactly as I remember before I started wearing hearing aids.
I don't know if what I've written makes any sense, but it's the way I understand it according to what my audi told me.
That's what I told my audi.
Also keep in mind that the only frequency I can't hear with my left CI is 8K.
With my right CI I'm able to hear 8K at 70 dB. That's still hearing, so this means I'm able to hear high frequencies. I just don't hear them at 20-30 dB like most other CI users.
Umm. What I had in mind were the last six highest pitched keys on the piano. I had no problems hearing lower fequencies but higher ones were difficult for me to hear.
Now I wonder if the deaf woman had the highest pitched keys or the lowest pitched keys in mind.
I know the electrodes are arranged in the cochlea from base to apex. Can an electrode from the apex still stimulate any part of the cochlea or only that part where the electrode is physically located? If so, can't people with CI be able to hear down to 20Hz like hearing people? Or do you still need an electrode in that portion of the cochlea?
Alternativately, do adjacant electrodes do double duty to compenstate for disabled electrodes? Can they send an electrical pulse far enough to stimulate the cochlea in the area where the disabled electrode resided? So your low and mid frequency electrodes can send a pulse far, far up to the base of the cochlea and still indirectly stimulate the high frequencies? Can they do the same so youd have *some* ability to hear very low frequencies like bass music or the humming of the fan? It's what id like to have when/if I get CI.
70db doesn't seem like much. Unaided I am about that and I don't hear 99.9% of the environmental sounds out there. I guess I could still say im "hearing" unaided but it's so little that it's pretty much deaf. I need to get down to 20-30db aided in order to hear plenty.
It's common for deaf people not to properly hear the highs. I also have no problem hearing lower frequencies but some deaf people have more low frequency residual hearing than I do. For example, I scored a 72% speech comphrension on an online speech test. This lady scored a 95% on the same test despite also having no high frequency hearing. She has 20db more low frequency hearing than me so she hears much louder and better than I. It's why I am having my HAs reprogrammed for more amplification so things aren't so quiet and my parents stop saying I talk too loud. I don't talk loud but my parents hear things much louder than I do.
Actually when I first got those new HAs, they said I was talking normally. Now they say I talk too loud. Perhaps my brain got used to it? Perhaps my hearing got worse? Ill find out when my dad returns from Israel where he went to visit family.
I wanted to thank you guys for participating in this fun test. I am gonna try it on a notebook, will have to ask if my bro has his with him and see how it compares to my score on the desktop. How faint was the piano? Were some keys louder than others? Did some adjacant keys sound identical? Did the highest key sound properly and was the sound like a whistle?
Keep the results comming in. So far I can conclude that those with CIs can hear all the higher keys and I assume so can hearing people. I am curious how the rest of you guys do and aren't you guys curious as well, especially where your cochlear dead regions reside? I was surprised how quickly the volume drops above 932Hz, are others experiencing a such thing after a certain frequency?
In the higher frequencies - it did sound a little faint, but you have to remember that I had my CI's mapped out that way...the higher frequencies sounds faint to ME, but I can still hear it.