Auditory Deprivation – Why Treat Hearing Loss Early

April 23rd, 2013

When most people are faced with the fact that they may be losing their hearing, they will  often opt for denial. This is partly because hearing loss is usually very gradual, so you adapt to it and don’t realise it’s happening. The tendency is to think ‘I’ll deal with this later when the problem gets worse,’ or to focus on the fact that you can still hear perfectly well one-to-one, but not when someone has their back turned, or has an American accent on TV, or when you’re in a noisy restaurant. In fact, many people with early hearing loss will attribute it mainly to the fact that most people are starting to mumble!

The main reason most people don’t take action is because they don’t think it matters. They think they can just as well deal with it next month or next year or in five years’ time when it becomes a real problem.

This is a mistake! The reason is auditory deprivation. What this means is that when the brain receives less auditory stimulus, the hearing pathways don’t get exercised so they start to atrophy and weaken, just like muscles that aren’t used. We have all heard the term ‘use it or lose it,’ and this definitely applies to the auditory cortex, and it’s proven by a growing body of research.

Evidence shows that ears not fitted with hearing aids lose acuity for speech recognition over time, compared to ears fitted with hearing aids.

This has only been known for about ten years and most doctors did not learn this in medical school. Therefore, unless your GP has attended recent hearing seminars and has personal interest in and knowledge of the audiology field, he or she may not give you this advice. But visit any audiologist, and they will.

Yes, your ears do matter. If you were told you had mild cancer, you wouldn’t dream of waiting until it became a real problem! Hearing loss is not life threatening (except when crossing the road) but like many other medical conditions, it is best treated early.

So the key to preserving your hearing, to hear better for longer, is to start early and make sure those pathways receive optimum stimulation. This means having your hearing checked and getting fitted with a hearing aid as soon as your friends and family start telling you you’re losing your hearing. Other people will always notice before you do, so listen!

Hearing aids help to prevent auditory deprivation by providing more sound to the ears in the frequencies where there is a weakness. This means the brain pathways get added stimulus where it is needed to keep those neurons firing.

Another method of preventing auditory deprivation is Sound Therapy. This method has a number of advantages which are different from those provided by hearing aids.

  • The Sounds being emphasised are very high frequencies. These are usually the first sounds lost with aging or noise induced damage. However hearing aids focus more on the mid range, the speech sounds, so may not provide as much needed stimulus in the high sounds. This is why Sound Therapy listeners often describe being able to hear and enjoy bird song or music which they hadn’t heard for many years.
  • Because of the complexity of the music and filtering, Sound Therapy provides a different type of stimulus which enhances brain performance, concentration, memory, creativity and sleep, in addition to reversing auditory deprivation.
  • Sound Therapy is very pleasant and relaxing and makes you feel better.
  • Sound therapy activates the middle ear muscles and engages many parts of the brain, improving the ability of the ear to focus. Thus it helps with auditory discrimination in background noise, a problem many people find hearing aids will not address.

But it is not a matter of either/or. If you need a hearing aid, you need a hearing aid, and the sooner you get one the better. If you need a hearing aid you will certainly benefit from using Sound Therapy as well, and will get more value out of the hearing aid and out of your ears.

The important thing is, act sooner rather than later! If you know someone who is always making you repeat yourself, please show them this article!

Here’s some other relevant links:

http://www.soundtherapy.com.au/v3/improve-your-ear/hearing.html

http://www.healthyhearing.com/content/articles/Hearing-loss/Causes/46306-Hearing-loss-auditory-deprivation

http://asadl.org/jasa/resource/1/jasman/v76/i5/p1357_s1?isAuthorized=no

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Finding a Sound Therapy Consultant

March 27th, 2013

Our portable Sound Therapy program is offered in two ways. One is to buy from our head office directly and be your own support person. The other is to purchase through one of our Independent Consultants, who sell our Synergy brand. For those who would like to deal with a local person and have a one on one relationship with someone who can help and advise them, this is a good option.
When people go looking for a Sound Therapist or a Sound Therapy practitioner they are hoping to find someone who understands their particular needs. A Sound Therapy practitioner has a unique appreciation of what it is like to live with ear disorders or auditory processing problems. The person with these problems may feel as though no one really understands because their difficulties may not be familiar to a doctor or audiologist. Sound Therapists have a different set of skills and knowledge for dealing with issues such as tinnitus, blocked ear, speech problems, or difficulty with focusing the hearing in background noise.
To find the right Sound Therapy consultant or practitioner you need to know what you are looking for. Many different methods use the generic term ‘sound therapy.’ These may include chanting, toning, crystal bowls, tuning forks etcetera. The best known method practiced by qualified Sound Therapists or Sound Therapy consultants is a filtered listening program based on the work of Dr Alfred Tomatis. This form of Sound Therapy is unique in a number of ways.
It uses classical music selected for its gentle harmonies and high frequency content. The music is filtered through a device originally designed by Dr Tomatis and called the Electronic Ear. This causes the music to have varied, stimulating tones which stimulate and enhance ear and brain function. The program progressively re-educates the ear and the whole hearing mechanism, helping a wide range of ear related and learning related problems.
Sound Therapy is used to treat some particular issues that are hard to treat in other ways. These include tinnitus, ear related dizziness, sound discrimination problems, learning and auditory processing problems, speech problems or stuttering, memory loss including dementia or brain damage from stroke or accident.
However it is also beneficial for those who simply want to hear better, have more energy and focus and want to enhance creativity and communication or singing voice and musical ear.
The program was traditionally offered only in a clinic setting by a fully trained Sound Therapist. In recent decades other more flexible versions of Sound Therapy have emerged. Some are portable systems used at home while others are offered through a qualified Sound Therapy consultant. The first method adopted for home use, and the most affordable is the Joudry method, developed by Patricia and Rafaele Joudry and described in their book, Sound Therapy: Music to Recharge Your Brain.
This method is offered by qualified Sound Therapy Consultants who may be practitioners in a range of allied health fields abut are also experienced in Sound Therapy and can advise and support you through your program. To find a Sound Therapy Consultant go to www.soundtherapysynergy.com

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Dystonia and Sound Therapy

February 12th, 2013

I recently saw a segment on the ABC about Dystonia being treated with magnetic brain stimulation. This was presented as a new, experimental therapy which may help the condition. Dystonia is “a movement disorder that causes the muscles to contract and spasm involuntarily,” according to the dystonia foundation.
Sound Therapy is used to treat some particular issues that are hard to treat in other ways. These include tinnitus, ear related dizziness, sound discrimination problems, learning and auditory processing problems, speech problems or stuttering, memory loss including dementia or brain damage from stroke or accident.
However it is also beneficial for those who simply want to hear better, have more energy and focus and want to enhance creativity and communication or singing voice and musical ear.
Their site goes on to say:
“The neurological mechanism that makes muscles relax when they are not in use does not function properly. Opposing muscles often contract simultaneously as if they are ‘competing’ for control of a body part. The involuntary muscle contractions force the body into repetitive and often twisting movements as well as awkward, irregular postures. There are multiple forms of dystonia, and dozens of diseases and conditions include dystonia as a major symptom.”

Though it is a specific neurological condition, viewed simply, dystonia is an extreme form of the inability to relax. Where it is distinct from normal muscle tension is that the syndrome is so entrenched as to seem quite beyond voluntary control.
The interesting thing is, Physiotherapy and massage sometimes simply don’t work. This is perhaps because these methods address the end organ of the nervous system, the muscles themselves, rather than the neurological origin. They are, in a sense, treating the symptom rather than the cause.
However, the condition has been successfully treated by some well established complementary therapies which give us a way to address the problem closer to source. The first one that came to mind is one I have studied myself and which I think deserves more recognition than it has received. This is The Alexander Technique which is a highly developed form of neuromuscular re-education. Read about it here in relation to dystonia.

Having suffered myself from chronic neck tension for over 20 years, I then recovered from this over fifteen years ago when I studied the Alexander Technique. It is a technique which, once you learn it, you can apply to yourself, as it teaches us to be aware and self responsible of our own thoughts and muscle responses at a very subtle level. It is an amazing gift to have this kind of inner control instead of being at the mercy of our own muscle spasms and tension patterns every day.
The other method I have experienced that can have an unexpected but significant effect on chronic neck tension is Sound Therapy. This sounds rather odd to people who are not aware of the interconnectedness of the nervous system and the ear. Dr Weekes documents how the twelve cranial nerves relate to the ear in his excellent article here
http://weeksmd.com/2008/05/the-therapeutic-aspect-of-sacred-music/

Once you understand the intricate linkages between the ear and the rest of the nervous system, it makes sense that enhancing ear function can also enhance posture and relieve neck tension. The 11th cranial nerve, the spinal accessory nerve, has branches to the pharynx, (the throat) the larynx, and the 2nd, 3rd and 4th cervical nerves. It interacts with the ear via the Vagus nerve, that unique cranial nerve which is named after the vagabond because it wanders throughout the chest and abdomen after interacting with the ear drum and nerves behind the ear.
Now that we are aware of neural plasticity, we can draw on this understanding to apply the neurological tools of change and re-education to resolve many different chronic disorders, including dystonia.

Read more at
http://www.dystonia-foundation.org/pages/what_is_dystonia_/26.php

http://dystoniasupport.blogspot.com.au/2011/02/alexander-technique-and-dystonia.html

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New study finds Sound Therapy reduces stress

January 15th, 2013

Today most people are exposed to levels of stress which affect wellbeing and long term health. Concerns such as the economy, climate change and daily survival affect us all. Added to these are events like bushfires, drought, floods, and then individual family events such as conflict or illness. None of us is exempt from stress.

When it comes to stress management, people will resolve to exercise more, eat better, take more breaks, and be nicer to others. But all of these things are easier said than done. Daily crises, triggers and temptation easily get in the way, and stress compounds.

Apart from taking medication – which may have long term side effects or addictive characteristics – most people could benefit from a simple stress solution which is so easy to do it can even fit into a hectic lifestyle without having to miss a beat.

Just such an option now exists with Sound Therapy, and evidence form a new study shows its value for those experiencing daily stress.

Sound Therapy, a portable listening program using specially filtered classical music through earphones, was tested on stressed individuals to see how it affected them on standard stress measures. Twenty Sound Therapy listeners were compared with a control group of twenty people who listened to normal classical music.

Researchers were intrigued to find that there was an increase in heart rate variability when subjects listened to Sound Therapy in the short term. The same response was not shown by those listening to the normal music. Heart rate variability is a known measurement of vagal regulation, which affects our stress responses and social engagement abilities.

Researchers Lucy Warhurst and Andrew Kemp of the University of Sydney believe that the findings give insight into the link between the middle ear muscles, the cranial nerves and the heart.

Sound Therapy listeners generally report that they feel calmer and more able to deal with life’s demands, and the mechanism of increased heart rate variability now gives a neurophysiological insight into why this may be so. The connection that has been discovered between vagal regulation and the middle ear muscles, is a clue as to why the right sort of music, designed to specifically stimulate these muscles, may have long term and profound effects on stress coping ability for some individuals.

To learn more about the effects of Sound Therapy on a wide array of stress related conditions, also see my book, Sound Therapy Music to Recharge Your Brain.

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Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Neuroplasticity and Sound Therapy

December 18th, 2012

PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, was originally known as “shell shock”, and is one of the most common disorders among returning veterans. The condition of PTSD can occur in anyone who has suffered a high degree of trauma, and this may include rape victims, battered women, abused children, or emergency service personnel.
Those suffering from PTSD usually have disturbing and intrusive memories, and may experience nightmares or flashbacks where they re-live the trauma as though it was occurring in the present.
Dr. Alaine Brunet, a Researcher at Montreal’s Douglas Mental Health University Institute and Associate Professor at the Department of Psychiatry at McGill University, has dedicated his career to studying the impact of trauma on mental health. http://www.chrcrm.org/en/rotm/dr-alain-brunet
According to Dr. Brunet, in some severe cases individuals are crippled by their memories and are virtually unable to eat, socialize or leave their homes. When symptoms get to this point of severity, interventions are needed.
Those experiencing PTSD become so overwhelmed because they cannot file the traumatic events in memory so they experience the trauma replaying repeatedly in the present.
New Combination Treatment for PTSD
A new approach to treatment has been developed, combining drug therapy with behavioural intervention as described on the recent SBS series hosted by Dr. Norman Doidge, called “Changing Your Mind.”
The therapeutic approach has been informed by new discoveries from neuroplasticity. Science has found that at the time of mental awareness, when the person is thinking about the event, there is heightened plasticity, so therefore a greater chance of change occurring in the neural pathways.
First, the therapist determines if the fear systems are firing. If so, the patient is given a low dose of propanalol, a sympatholytic non-selective beta blocker, – for hypertension. The patient then has to write an explicit narrative of the traumatic memory. They then read it through – which takes less than 10 mins. The following week and every week, this is repeated. The drug is given, and the patient then re-reads their account of the memory.
Some found at first that this process would trigger nightmares about the trauma. However, by week five, many would notice that all of a sudden they felt some detachment while reading out the memories. All subjects experienced significant recovery and at the end of the experiment, three quarters of the subjects no longer had PTSD!
This change can occur because, as Dr Doidge is fond of saying, neurons that fire apart wire apart. This dual process means that we can chemically block the trauma while re-playing the memory, and this breaks the neuronal link of the memory with the traumatic emotional response.
The link can be broken while remembering, because it is at this point that the network becomes more pliable. This method is not erasing memory, but transforming it so it belongs to the past.
Watching this show made me think about other possible ways to support the process of transforming traumas into normal memory. How else can we heighten neural plasticity while inducing a state of calm and self assurance? What struck me is that we know that Sound Therapy does both of these things. Neural plasticity is enhanced by the intensive sensory stimulation of Sound Therapy, and at the same time it induces a deep state of peace and relaxation.
On its own Sound Therapy has been reported by a number of individuals to have helped significantly with alleviating PTSD. It could also potentially be combined with other treatment approaches such as the one described above.

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What does Neural Plasticity have to do with OCD?

November 26th, 2012

And where does Sound Therapy come in?
In the new field of neural plasticity we are being given the opportunity to shape our own brains. The discovery of neural plasticity was made over the last two to three decades through the work of numerous pioneering scientists. One of the key innovators was Dr Michael Merzenich, whose work is beautifully summarised in the book by Dr Norman Doidge, The Brain that Changes Itself.
Did you see the fascinating 2 part series in the last couple of weeks on SBS with Norman Doidge called Changing Your Mind? If you missed it, you can view it online at this link http://www.sbs.com.au/documentary/program/934
Also here is a transcript from the 7:30 Report interview with Norman Doige. http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2008/s2360105.htm

Today I want to talk about OCD, one of the topics covered in this series. Over the years people have asked me “would Sound Therapy help OCD?”
The new neural plasticity research gives a glimpse into how conditions such as this can be helped and what is the process of change that needs to occur in the way the brain functions.
Specialists in this field have found that you have to re-train the brain in order to overcome OCD. Due to recent neural plasticity research we now have more information on how to do this and how Sound Therapy can help. Changing the brain requires a combined approach of intentional awareness and retraining through repeated stimulation and repeated practice of new habits.

OCD is a brain circuit gone rogue. Taming it is a process of re-training and raised awareness.
One of the key brain centres involved in OCD is the caudate. The caudate enables you to shift your focus onto the next thing. The caudate doesn’t work well in people with OCD and this is a key part of the disorder. This low function can be challenged by learning new thought patterns.
Dr Jeffrey Swartz M.D. Associate Research Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA School of Medicine is a researcher in the field of self-directed neuro-plasticity who has developed specific treatment protocols for OCD.

The first step in overcoming OCD is learning to become the impartial spectator –
the external observer, observing the self objectively. This is a uniquely human ability and interestingly is also part of the training encouraged in many types of spiritual practice and meditation.
In OCD treatment, the patient has to learn that you don’t believe everything you think.

Dr Swartz has developed 4 steps for recovery from OCD. read more on this link http://hope4ocd.com/foursteps.php

Here, very briefly, are the four steps.
Step 1: Relabel step back and be mindful
Step 2: Reattribute remember how the brain lock occurs – this is through a circuit between certain brain centres, the orbito-frontal cortex, the anterior cingulate cortex and the caudate.
Step 3: Refocus focus on constructive activity
Step 4: Revalue notice when compulsions are beginning to fade, re-evaluate and realise they can be ignored.

The fascinating discovery which truly shows the power of such retraining is that when you step out of the worry circuit the neurons stop firing.

So what is the role of Sound Therapy in this type of change? As we know, Sound Therapy listeners experience reduced stress, reduced worry and busy mind, an increased sense of inner calm and optimism. We know that the kind of sensory stimulation provided by Sound Therapy helps to build new brain pathways and a more useful integration and organisation in the brain. This certainly suggests that combining Sound Therapy with self-directed awareness for neural plasticity is going to be a valuable support to such programs.

The change process requires
1. Insight
2. Awareness
3. Effort
4. Focussed attention

Clients say “it allowed me to shape my own brain.”
I would suggest a fifth addition to the list could be useful, challenging sensory stimulation, to physiologically assist with the process of restructuring the brain.

I would be very interested to hear from listeners or practitioners who have experienced or observed the impact of Sound Therapy on OCD.

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New Neuroscience Research Explains Sound Therapy

October 17th, 2012

Exciting new research information is now coming to light, updating the science behind Sound Therapy and why it is so effective. There is much enthusiasm for the new book Polyvagal Theory by Neuroscience writer, Stephen Porges. I came across a link to some reviews of the book which give an excellent, comprehensive dialogue about the implications of this work. While Porges himself is restrained from making broad assertions about the practical implications of his theory for health, some of these are suggested by the reviewers. Here are some of my favourite quotes from the reviews. (You can read more via the link below.)
“The real role of the autonomic nervous system in human functioning has been neglected far too long. Perhaps that is because our culture likes to think everything that is important is subject to the will while the autonomic nervous system is not.”
This touches on the beauty of Sound Therapy as being such an easy method of self development. As one happy customer said to me yesterday :
“It’s like having an earobics instructor for your ear but it does the work for you. Our brain needs re-setting. Most of us are walking around with that happening. Its off-line from the stress. This kind of brings it back. It’s like a chiropractic adjustment for the brain – for the emotions.”

Another quote from a reviewer on Amazon:
“The polyvagal theory is practically begging for implications to be drawn about the practical areas of lifestyle, physical exercises, interpersonal relations, social relations, psychotherapy, childrearing, family life etc… Porges manages to resist the temptation, perhaps because he feels a scientist should not go there. As another reviewer writes he does mention listening therapy, but if I am not mistaken, that was developed by Alfred Tomatis The Conscious Ear: My Life of Transformation Through Listening who Porges does not cite or credit, but that is a quibble.”
As stated by some of the reviewers, it does help to have a medical or neuroscience background to read this book, which is not aimed at the lay person. For this reason, I have tried to summarise what Porges discoveries really mean for us in our use of Sound Therapy.

Here is my summary:
When innervated, (stimulated by their nerves) the middle ear muscles, — stapedius and tensor tympani — (the former innervated via a branch of the facial nerve and the latter by a branch of the trigeminal nerve), tighten the ossicular chain, dampening the amplitude of the low-frequency components of sound that reach the inner ear (Porges, 2003). Hence, two functions impinge on the activity of these muscles; the attenuation (loss or reduction) of low-frequency sound and; consequently, the extraction (and perception) of high-frequency sounds, such as those characteristic of the human voice.
In simple terms The vagus nerve affects the function of the middle ear muscles, which play a role in dampening low frequency sound and enabling us to focus on the human voice.
1. Stimulation with high frequency sounds enhances the ability of the cranial nerves to act on the middle ear muscles, enabling them to block out low frequencies.
2. This process also reduces stress and enhances communication and emotional adaptability.
3. This also calms thoughts and feelings (behaviour and physiology)
4. Therefore, improvement in vagal regulation enhances communication and emotional adaptability.

Read more of the reviews of Porges work here
http://www.amazon.com/Polyvagal-Theory-Neurophysiological-Communication-Self-regulation/product-reviews/0393707008/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1
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How can ear infections lead to autism?

August 30th, 2012

Did you see the segment on Four Corners last Tuesday night about the brain gut connection? I was surprised to see this knowledge presented as cutting edge, almost unrecognised information. I am aware that the Mindd Foundation  has been holding annual conferences for over ten years on the gut brain connection. This is an annual conference devoted to exploring the gut-brain connection and its relation to autism and other learning difficulties. Experts such as Dr Natasha Campbell McBride and Dr Robyn Cosford have been running booked-out practices and helping thousands of children to make substantial recovery from sensory processing and developmental abnormalities through nutritional intervention to help re-build healthy gut flora. Yet sadly for the majority of families dealing with autism, this knowledge is still not commonly available.
On Four Corners a mother told the heartbreaking story of how her perfectly normal child, after an ear infection and taking four courses of prescribed anti-biotics developed regressive autism, from which he was unable to recover.
There is now a mass of evidence and professional agreement that there is a strong connection between the gut and the brain, and with autism, substances in the gut profoundly impact the brain.
The gut functions like a huge, factory with trillions of metabolically active players. But if all the elements are not in balance, metabolic by products produced by the overgrowth of bad microorganisms such as bacteria, yeast, fungi etc. can cause dramatic neurobehavioral effects.
Children are much more vulnerable than adults and react to toxins in the environment, as well as microbial and metabolic toxins generated from within their own bodies.
While there is extensive research in this field, parents may not know where to turn for practical, affordable help that is easy to apply for busy families.
My book Why Aren’t I Learning? published in 2004 covers these issues in Chapter 9. However, since then I have been lucky enough to learn of ground breaking research at the CSIRO in recent years which developed a new transport system for healthy gut flora, enabling us to load up the entire intestinal tract with trillions of healthy bacteria, and keep them alive all the way into the bowel where they are most needed. Through a company I work with, these products are now available to the public. We do have answers which can allow us to nutritionally load the body so it can fight off many of today’s invading chemicals. By using this available knowledge we don’t have to be passive victims to the toxic environment our planet has become.
This is why we recommend nutritional support in combination with Sound Therapy, especially for children with learning and developmental difficulties. There is such a high co-occurrence of learning problems with food sensitivities, skin conditions, respiratory and immune disorders that it is clear we cannot ignore biochemistry and nutrition in trying to treat learning issues.
To explore how these issues may be affecting your child, I invite you to take our Children’s Assessment on line here. http://tinyurl.com/childs-assessment

www.mindd.org

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Olympics for the ear

August 7th, 2012

We don’t generally think of listening as an Olympic sport do we? We don’t think of training or improving our hearing or listening ability, or developing our ear muscles?
However, when we look at hearing and listening from a Sound Therapy perspective this changes!
I started thinking about this the other day when I spoke to a 79 year old gentleman who has had a long history of ear troubles and tinnitus.
This gentleman had hearing problems from before the age of 30. From age 12 to 30 he was surfing at the beach every chance he got. As a result he used to frequently have problems with liquid coming out of his ears or wax building up which would require syringing.
At age 20, when playing football, he received a direct kick to his left ear, giving him a ‘cauliflower ear’ and this started his tinnitus. He also worked as a tradesman in a sheet metal shop for a total of 5 years and was exposed to high levels of industrial noise.
Later, when he went in as a consultant in the building game, he suffered many embarrassing moments due to poor hearing. He said, “The problem was I must have made that many errors with mispronunciation, not getting the story right.” He found he had to get to every meeting early to sit right in the middle of the table so he could see everybody. Otherwise if he arrived late and was in a different seat, at some point in the meeting they would say, “It’s your turn to talk” and he’d say “what do you want me to talk about?”
Seeking help he saw many doctors and had an ear operation in 1984 after which he could hear better. However, on returning home, when he blew his nose, it seemed to upset the fine tuning in his ear. To me, this indicates a problem with the pressure balance and muscle function in the middle ear.
After retirement he was less stressed and found noticeable changes. But gradual hearing loss and tinnitus still meant he had trouble keeping up with conversations. As a golf player his hearing loss was a disadvantage, as hearing the club hit the ball is an important point of feedback for refining your stroke.
People with hearing problems usually have a very long journey of seeing many practitioners before they find answers. At one time during a normal ear wash procedure, for removal of wax build up, his left ear drum was damaged. He was left bleeding from the ear, and of course this would have made his earlier problems even worse!
A more positive experience was when he was tested by an experienced ENT doctor who knew how to do accurate diagnosis. First he was given a normal hearing test at which he performed very badly. Then the doctor took a tuning fork, struck it so it was humming, and placed it against the patient’s temple. To his amazement he could hear the sound the tuning fork was making as clear as a bell! Before this he was not aware that we hear through our bones.
In fact, bone conducts sound just as well as air does, and the role of ear drum and middle ear is to catch the sound from the air and transfer the vibration into the bones. If there has been damage to the middle ear mechanism it cannot conduct sound into the bones. This is called ‘conductive hearing loss.’ This man had conductive hearing loss, but his bone conduction is comparatively good. This means there is still function in his inner ear and the sensory cells (the little hair-like cells called cilia, which we hear so much about.) The worst damage is in the mechanical part of the ear – and no doubt partly in the muscle function in the middle ear.
At this time of the Olympics, we are all super conscious of the adaptability and reconditioning possible for the muscular system of the body. We see those muscle bound athletes on the screen and we know that their shape represents hours and hours and months and years of training. So how can we re-train the muscles of the middle ear to reach their peak performance?
This is easy with Sound Therapy, which offers the ear a progressive, tailored retraining, audio-gymnastic program, through sounds which become gradually more and more challenging for the ear. Just as brain plasticity has now been irrefutably proved by science, new cutting edge research by neuro-physiologist Dr Stephen Porges is now showing how the middle ear muscles are part of a social engagement system involving many different sensorineural pathways that respond to and can be improved by certain types of sound stimulation.
I was able to explain to this gentleman that there is a good chance for Sound Therapy to help him in this area. If his middle ear muscle performance can be enhanced, there is every chance that his hearing will improve, as we know that his bone conduction (and therefore his sensorineural hearing) is still working.
Even at 79, or even over the age of 90, we have seen people benefit significantly form the audio gymnastic retraining this program offers.
So if you are sitting in your arm chair watching the Olympics, and thinking “I’ll never get anywhere near the fitness of those athletes, its too late for me,” remember that it is never too late to improve the fitness of your ears for listening.

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What is Auditory Processing?

July 20th, 2012

Most people are a bit unclear on what is meant by Auditory Processing. Is it a problem children have, or is it something we all do every day when we use speech and language?
In fact auditory processing is essential for talking on the phone, reading a book or having a conversation. This is why, if children have an auditory processing disorder, they struggle to keep up in school.
Sound Therapy is an easy and enjoyable way to improve our auditory processing, so we are often explaining to our clients what auditory processing is and how important it is to our daily functioning. In fact, enhancing auditory processing is at the core of most of what we do with Sound Therapy.
Auditory processing describes how we pay attention to sound – how the brain interprets the sounds we hear. It is defined as the ability to ‘hold, sequence and process’ auditory information (DEET 1991).
Auditroy Processing Quadrants

Most of us actually hear far more than we are aware of. For example, we may not notice the ticking clock or the dripping tap until someone draws our attention to it. This is because, while hearing is a function of the ear, listening – paying attention – is a function of the brain.

A person with an auditory processing difficulty will experience trouble in many basic daily communication tasks. If you can tick more than two or three items on this list, for you or your child, this probably indicates an auditory processing problem.

• Delayed language development
• Poor listening ability
• Difficulty conversing on the phone
• Difficulty hearing in a noisy room
• Trouble in sequencing the sounds of words
• Difficulty perceiving high frequency sounds: ‘t’, ‘f’ ’s’, ‘k’, ‘p’, ‘th’, ’sh’
• Confusion with similar sounds: e.g. ‘da’ and ‘ba’
• High distractibility, with a short attention span
• Poor speech comprehension, often asking ‘What?’
• Poor memory and inability to follow directions
• Difficulty in expressing desires, often blaming the other person for not understanding
• Academic problems, particularly in spelling, reading or comprehension
• Difficulty pronouncing complicated words
• Behaviour problems and social difficulties

You can read more about auditory processing on our website . And on the same page you can scroll to the bottom and request a free report on auditory processing at this link

I find when I explain about Sound Therapy to someone who has poor auditory processing, often a light goes on, as finally they feel someone recognises this problem they have struggled with internally for years. It really is like having crossed wires in your sound reception or sound output system. In fact, that description is more accurate than you may think!
Dr Tomatis discovered that to process sound efficiently, the right ear must lead. The right ear is the most direct route for sound to reach the brain, as it has the most direct connection to the main processing centre for language, which is in our left auditory cortex. Sound Therapy programs are recorded with a specific emphasis in the filtering to stimulate the responsiveness of the right ear, and train the listener in right ear dominance. This serves to “untangle the crossed wires” and make sequencing of sound, and high frequency sound awareness much more fluent.
Auditory processing disorder is also sometimes called Central Auditory Processing Disorder (CAPD).

Sub Categories of CAPD
Because this disorder encompasses several different difficulties, it has been broken into a number of subcategories, each of which has different signs and different treatment approaches.
• Auditory decoding deficit is the ability to understand and de-code incoming sound.
• Auditory associative deficit affects our ability to create links between incoming sounds and our auditory memories.
• Auditory Integration Deficit means we may have trouble linking tone of voice to the meaning of words.
• Prosodic deficit affects the ability to interpret tone of voice.
• Output organisational deficit makes it hard to organise and produce the words we want to explain ourselves.
Here is a chart I have adapted to show how Sound Therapy is relevant to each subtype.
Profile Region of Dysfunction Associated Problems Educational Intervention Benefits of Sound Therapy
Auditory decoding deficit
Primary (left) Auditory Cortex
Difficulties with spelling hearing in noise. speech sound training. Improves clarity of hearing.
Auditory Associative Deficit
Left (associative) Cortex
Receptive language deficits. Rephrase using smaller linguistic units. Improves comprehension and vocabulary.
Integration deficit
Corpus Callosum
Cerebellum Difficulty linking prosody and linguistic content. Limit or discontinue use of multimodality cues. Improves auditory visual linkages.
Prosodic Deficit
Nonprimary (right) Auditory Cortex and associated areas
Cerebellum Difficulties with judging communicative intent. Placement with animated teacher. emotional appreciation of meaning in sound.
Output organisational deficit
Temporal-to-frontal and/or efferent system
Cerebellum Difficulties with expressive language and word retrieval. training in use of organization aids. Improves motor praxis
CAPD

This chart has been adapted from the excellent work of Dr. Teri James Bellis’ Subprofiles of CAPD. Find more detail here http://www.angelfire.com/bc2/capd5/
I have added into this excellent outline, the relevance and benefits of Sound Therapy for the different types of CAPD.

What causes Auditory Processing Disorder?
Many parents today are very concerned about what causes these problems and how to prevent them. This type of learning difficulty has definitely increased in the last couple of decades (ask any teacher over 40). Is it our fast paced lifestyle and the overload of electronic communications? New evidence suggests this may in fact be the case. I came across a fascinating article that was published in the New York Times called Fixated by Screens, but Seemingly Nothing Else by Perri Klass, M.D. Published: May 9, 2011.
Experts say that a child’s ability to stay focussed on a screen but nowhere else is indicative of ADHD – a condition which has strong overlaps with Auditory Processing Disorder. It appears that children with ADHD spend more time playing video games than their peers. The immediate rewards of point scoring provide frequent injections of the neurotransmitter, dopamine. Researchers have theorised that the very immediate, second to second rewards offered by video games, train the brain only to respond at such speeds on high alert, and detract from the ability to sustain attention and defer rewards. It is thought that Children with ADHD may find video games even more gratifying than other children do because their dopamine reward circuitry may be otherwise deficient. Thus video games may act as a kind of self medication for these children.
While increased screen time may be a result of ADHD some researchers also fear it may be one of the factors causing sensory processing disorders. Some studies have found that children who spend more time in front of the screen are more likely to develop attention problems later on.
Links have also been found between auditory processing disorders and depression, as dysfunctional neurotemporal circuits are seen in both cases. View this link to read about research into this correlation. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1963351/
Therefore, auditory processing disorders are not just an inconvenience. They do indicate a deficiency in brain performance and a matter that needs to be taken seriously by the parents or individuals with this condition. It is fortunate to be able to address such problems with a non-invasive, beneficial retraining technique such as Sound Therapy, as opposed to having to turn to drugs for the lack of another solution.
DEET (1991). Australia’s language: The Australian Language and Literacy Policy. Australian Government Publishing Service.

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