Why do some pp with profound loss have usable hearing and others don't?

[NaidaUP]

Ability to understand speech is the key, some cannot easily understand spoken words.

I was thinking about this earlier. Getting a CI doesn't mean you can understand speech.

I have friends that have CIs, 2 of them, you wouldn't even know they are deaf and have had them since birth, even there speech is perfect. 3 of them were implanted later on in life (late deafened) and still really struggle and can not use the phone, communicate without lip reading. Even hear if someone is right behind them.

 

[green427]

I think if you miss the crucial years for speech and language development as a toddler, you're pretty much screwed later on. Like potty training, a lot of neural wiring and connections have to be laid down to "hear".

This is what I truly believe.

I was born hearing, developed language skills, and at 4 years old, had severe infections that damaged my cochleas. I had profound loss, 90-something in one ear and 80-something in the other. Hearing aid gave me some benefit. By wearing a HA for many years, my brain has mapped certain sounds based on what I can hear.

Hearing loss in one person is never the same as another. Some are bizarre: I have a friend that is classified as profound, cannot hear normal conversations, but he can hear a truck a mile away.

 

[green427]

I was thinking about this earlier. Getting a CI doesn't mean you can understand speech.

I have friends that have CIs, 2 of them, you wouldn't even know they are deaf and have had them since birth, even there speech is perfect. 3 of them were implanted later on in life (late deafened) and still really struggle and can not use the phone, communicate without lip reading. Even hear if someone is right behind them.

Correct. I am a perfect example: my hearing loss chart shows that I can now hear 80% of all sounds while wearing my CI's. In order for me to understand speech without lipreading, the circumstances have to be just right, and the person's speech has to be just right. Some people are easy to understand, others are not.

As I said in another post: I've met a few teens that had been implanted at birth, and they are doing much better than I am, even though we might have similar hearing loss charts. It all boils down to many, many things.

 

[ecp]

There are 2 types of cochlear hair cells, inner and outer.
The outer hair cells act as amplifiers and the inner hair cells transmit sound to the 8th cranial nerve which goes to the brain.
Loss of outer hair cells reduces loudness and some clarity but loss of inner hair cells degrades the sound message.
In addition, the auditory cortex of the brain is very malleable but when the signals that do reach it are degraded enough the bRain starts using those cells for other things. This same thing happens to people who become blind.

Also, some people with profound hearing loss have good hearing in low frequencies and profound in high frequencies and others have flat hearing loss across the board. Being able to hear in some frequencies is advantageous.

Also, access to useable hearing at a young age 'primes' the brain for understanding speech at a later age. This is part of why people with hearing loss often have good speech if the loss is slow.