![]() This article provides a brief summary of the major advantages of binaural compared with monaural hearing. For most individuals with bilateral hearing loss, the body of evidence collected across decades of research has also found that the provision of two compared with one hearing aid yields significant benefit for the listener. In addition to improved speech intelligibility in quiet, noisy, and reverberant environments, binaural versus monaural listening improves perceived sound quality and decreases the effort listeners must expend to understand a target voice of interest or to monitor a multitude of potential target voices. ![]() Modern technical systems offer optimized solutions either for selective listening or for integrative listening (see the article by Jespersen et al in this issue for more information about a system that attempts to address this dilemma).Ĭlinicians have understood the advantage of listening with two ears compared with one. Achieving both perceptual goals at the same time is not always possible, depending on the degree of hearing loss and the acoustic coupling of the hearing aid to the ear. Therefore, the challenge for an ideal, technically assisted binaural hearing rehabilitation is twofold: (1) provide acoustic cues to the impaired auditory system in such a way that the individual mental spatial map can be created and maintained and (2) allow attention to focus on single acoustic sources if needed. People with hearing loss might fall short of creating such a reliable map under all circumstances. The capability of the senses in combination with the abstraction power of the brain to create and maintain a reliable mental map of the ever-changing environment in relation to the position of the human body is essential for a person to reach a certain level of “peace of mind” or to focus attention on a single acoustic object. This representation consists of characteristic information about the surrounding space and the location of acoustic objects. The sense of hearing is “always on,” thereby allowing it to create a basic mental representation of the physical world in relation to the human body even when a person sleeps or when visual information is unavailable. With its sensitivity to acoustic information arriving from any location around the listener, the sense of hearing is especially helpful for guiding the sense of vision, and, by that, body posture in a direction potentially worth focusing more attention. ![]() ![]() In general, information from all human senses is used synergistically to allow the biological system to interact with the world. Aspects related to the communication and exchange of data between the left and right hearing aids are discussed together with typical algorithmic approaches implemented in modern hearing aids.īinaural signal processing in hearing aids relates to the binaural hearing capabilities of normal-hearing listeners and the individually altered monaural and binaural hearing capabilities of listeners with a degraded sense of hearing. This article briefly summarizes the major advantages of binaural compared with monaural hearing, followed by a detailed description of the related technological advances in modern hearing aids. For most individuals with bilateral hearing impairment, the body of evidence collected across decades of research has also found that the provision of two compared with one hearing aid yields significant benefit for the user. For many years, clinicians have understood the advantages of listening with two ears compared with one.
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