Keywords:
Binaural vs. monaural hearing, localizing sounds, hearing from different sources at different frequencies, frequency perception, anatomy of the hearing process, technology of modern hearing systems.
Switch on Life is a unique free online learning platform which covers many aspects of hearing loss and hearing technology in plain English.
Using a mix of videos and interactive educational games, players tackle a variety of listening tasks and challenges. This way you experience the simulation of everyday life with hearing loss and the development and effects of the individual types of hearing loss. You learn about the fundamental anatomical facts of hearing and how you can turn sound frequencies on and off at will. How does a concert sound if you only hear the high notes? How much can you understand when amongst friends if you are deaf in one ear? Which audio frequencies are necessary to fully comprehend the sound of a waterfall? How is the cochlea structured?
Switch on Life also offers visitors a unique opportunity to learn about the fascinating world of hearing and hearing implant technology from the world's leading scientists and experts in the field of cochlear implantation.
In the first two games, Meet Your Friends and Spatial Hearing, players can choose between hearing with only one ear and hearing with both ears.
Meet Your Friends simulates a group conversation in a noisy restaurant. While listening, players are presented with challenges. For example, you are asked to locate a source of noise or to answer specific questions about the conversation. This way, you can test how much has been understood of a conversation with only one ear. Through this experience you find out how a person with a single-sided hearing loss experiences the situation.
In Spatial Hearing, the players are taken into a professional audio laboratory. You learn how difficult, if not impossible, it is to localize the sound sources with only one ear. The American hearing and speech scientist Prof. Michael Dorman then explains why this is the case and which advantages come with binaural hearing.
In Two ears are better, Professor Christopher Raine, a British ENT surgeon, presents the basic idea of cochlear implant technology in easy-to-understand language. Prof. Raine explains, among other things, how children who have a severe hearing loss can benefit from bilateral cochlear implantation.
In Daydream - Worlds of Sound, players can make a comparison between experiencing frequency loss and hearing the entire frequency range. In different listening situations (forest, concert, and party) you can select to listen to low, medium, or high frequencies. In the filtered version of the situation all other tones are lost.
Although this is not a simulation of hearing loss, you get an idea of what it means to not be able to hear all frequencies (anymore). In a concert, for example, many different instruments make up the rich sound of an orchestra. Each instrument displays a different range of tones.
Bass instruments start at very low tones, and cymbals, e.g., contribute to the highest tones. After waking up from a daydream, a Belgian ENT surgeon Professor Paul van de Heyning explains the role that different tones and frequencies play in natural hearing.
With the help of the Magic Curtains, the players change the spectrum of the sounds you hear by moving the curtains back and forth on the screen. This way, you learn which frequencies make a waterfall sound powerful, which frequency range is most important to understand conversations, and which frequencies need to be heard for an orchestra to sound warm and complete.
The game Into the Cochlea connects what has already been learned with our human anatomy. The players experience how a piece of music sounds when only low tones can be heard in the apical region (= tip of the cochlea), which tones can be perceived in the middle region and which ones in the basal region. Finally, what has been learned about frequency perception in the cochlea is linked to cochlear implant technology and cochlear implant electrode arrays.
Music with Cochlear Implants shows how different electrode lengths and their placement can affect hearing perception in cochlear implant users. Only when the auditory nerves inside the inner ear are electrically stimulated in the right place by the cochlear implant, can different sounds be produced. To illustrate this, Mozart's A Little Night Music (“Eine kleine Nachtmusik”) can be heard with different combinations of electrode lengths and positions.
In the last chapter, Trampolines, Tones & Pulses, players learn that pitch is determined by the frequency of the air pressure oscillations. The greater the frequency of the vibrations, the higher the tone. Low tones with their slow vibration reach the apical region of the cochlea, while high tones reach the basal region.
American experimental psychologist Professor David M. Landsberger explains that by choosing the correct length and position of the electrode for each cochlea, cochlear implants can stimulate pitches in different vibrations at different locations in the cochlea. If the tempo of the impulses reaches the inside of the cochlea correctly, this leads to something very close to natural hearing. Thus, access to the hearing world and even the enjoyment of music is possible again.