(470) Hearing

Yesterday I watched part of a documentary on television.

As soon as I switched to the channel, it was a family showing up for an appointment in a hospital. The baby being held in the mother's arms had had no sense of hearing since it was born. The medical personnel taped a gadget that they called an electrode to the side of the child's head, I also saw something that looked like a sort of hearing aid around the ear on the same side of the electrode. Test sounds were transmitted by computer to catch the child's attention. Then the person controlling the computer prepared everyone present. Except for the mother, everyone else was to keep quiet. The first sound the baby hears in his brain will be that of the mother. It might be upset or frightened.

As expected, the child reacted by crying quite loudly.

The next person the program focused on was a percussionist (musician) who lost her hearing at the age of nine. At the age of twenty, she opted to live without any electronic aide. She chose to lip read and to "hear" using her entire body. Even though I have had no musical training, I could see that she was a good musician with much passion for her craft. Looking at the fact that our bodies are made up of a skeleton capable of vibrating with sound waves, what she said made sense. Knowing that our normal sense of hearing confines to a limited range of frequencies, this unusual musician can probably "hear" a wider range that the rest of us. It is interesting that such an impairment has actually worked in her favour once she overcome her initial problem.

The program ended by showing a family unit of four. Dad received his aide ten years ago. Mum had hers seven years ago. The elder boy had had two, one at age seven months and the next at age four. The younger girl too has received aide. From birth to four or five years old, the brain has the capability to develop normally should it be able to receive sound inputs, whether through the ears or not. Even if the signals received is limited in many respects, the brain will be able to compensate by working and enriching the signals into meaningful sounds. Once it is past the window (birth to 4 or 5), we lose the opportunity of taking advantage of this capability of the brain called plasticity. These two children are indeed blessed by being born in Canada, where such medical technology is available.

I will be on the look out for programs of this sort, I find it informative and interesting.