Glossary of Ear and Hearing Loss Terms

A structure of the inner ear made up of three fluid-filled, semicircular tubes (canals), the utricle and the saccule that assist with balance. (See also Vestibular System.)

Surgery to cut the vestibular branch of the 8th cranial nerve. This is done when intractable vertigo resulting from a condition such as Meniere’s disease becomes debilitating. When this is done, the person has no balance function in that ear, but no more vertigo either.

A therapeutic program that uses exercises to help you regain your sense of balance.

That portion of the inner ear and the central nervous system involved with the sense of balance. It includes the semi-circular canals, saccule, utricle and vestibule. This system controls your equilibrium (balance) and stabilizes your eyes in space. It works together with your brain to sense, maintain and regain your balance and a sense of where your body and its part are positioned. It regulates movement (walking, running, etc.) and keep objects in visual focus as the body moves. Many ototoxic drugs can damage your vestibular system. This can give rise to a whole host of balance-related problems.

See Eighth Cranial Nerve.

A form of Telecommunications Relay Service which allows a user with a videophone to connect with a TRS Communications Assistant (CA) who uses American Sign Language (ASL) to facilitate telephone calls between people who use ASL (typically deaf people) and others.

A hearing testing procedure for children in which the child’s responses to sound are reinforced with a visual event (such as a toy that moves). The audiologist attempts to condition the child to look for the toy when a sound is heard, thus providing a method for testing the hearing of small children. This procedure is most appropriate for children in the 6-month to 3-year age range.

See Vestibular Nerve Section.

Voice Carry Over allows people who are deaf or have limited hearing to speak directly to hearing people. When a standard telephone user speaks to you, a Communications Assistant (CA) serves as your “ears” and types everything said where it is displayed on your TTY or special VCO phone.

A device for increasing or decreasing the volume (gain) of a hearing aid or assistive listening device.

See Visual Reinforcement Audiometry.

See Video Relay Service.

Wavelength is the distance between sound (compression) waves and is directly related to frequency—the higher the frequency, the shorter the wavelength. In fact, if you divide the speed of sound in air by the frequency of the sound you are interested in, the result is the wavelength. Human hearing ranges from 20 to about 20,000 Hz. The corresponding wavelengths are 56.3 feet to 0.67 inches.

See Ear Wax.

See Word Discrimination testing.

The feedback sound a hearing aid makes when it does not fit tightly in the ear canal. Often the hard of hearing person does not hear this sound, but it sure annoys the people nearby. Often it is described as a squealing sound.

White noise is noise whose amplitude is constant throughout the audible frequency range. The sound of white noise is a high-pitched hissing, similar to the sound of steam escaping from an overheated radiator. White noise is produced by a random noise generator, and is used in tinnitus maskers and in Tinnitus Retraining Therapy. More technically, white noise is defined as sound with equal power per Hz in frequency. Since each successive octave of frequency has twice as many Hz in its range, the power in white noise increases by a factor of two for each succeeding higher octave. Thus, white noise increases by 3 dB per octave in power. Incidentally, our ears hears the high frequency hissing in white noise more than the lower-frequency sounds since the ear is more sensitive to high frequencies. This high-frequency sound tends to grate on the nerves more than lower frequency sounds, so now they are beginning to use the more natural-sounding pink noise in tinnitus maskers and related devices instead of white noise.

A special circuit in some hearing aids that compresses a wide range of sounds into a narrower range. This makes soft sounds easier to hear and makes loud sounds more comfortable for listening.

The older term for what is now called Word Recognition Testing.

A test that determines how well you can understand single-syllable words when they are heard at your most comfortable level. The results are expressed as a percentage. (See also Discrimination.)

See Word Recognition testing.