Glossary of Ear and Hearing Loss Terms

The tiny “hairs” within the cochlea.

See Continuous Interleaved Sampling.

A previous version of internal part of a particular cochlear implant made by Advanced Bionics. It was superseded by theCII Bionic Ear in April 2001.

A hearing loss that can be detected by normal audiological testing using the conventional test frequencies between 125 Hz and 8,000 Hz.

Displaying text of spoken words, often placed at the bottom of movies or television screens. This allows a hard of hearing viewer to follow the dialogue (even though he can’t hear it) and the action of a program simultaneously. Closed captioning may be turned on or off at will by the person watching the TV.

See Central Nervous System.

A coalition of national, regional, and community-based organizations which advocates for legislative and regulatory safeguards that will ensure full access for deaf and hard of hearing people to evolving high speed broadband, wireless and other Internet protocol (IP) technologies.

See Coalition of Organizations for Accessible Technologies.

(COKE-lee-uh) The auditory portion of the inner ear consisting of fluid-filled channels containing the hair cells. The cochlea is shaped like a small snail shell and normally consists of two and a half turns. The cochlea converts incoming sound waves from the middle ear into electrical signals and transmits these signals to the auditory nerve.

A device that substitutes for damaged (dead) hair cells of the inner ear. It consists of an electrode array that is surgically implanted in the cochlea. It delivers electrical signals to the auditory nerve from an external processor, enabling people with severe to profoundly hearing loss to perceive sound again. Cochlear implants are an option if hearing aids do not give you significant benefit.

Sometimes called the auditory nerve or the acoustic nerve. One of the two branches of the eighth cranial nerve. It conducts the hearing signals from the inner ear to the brain. (See also Eighth Cranial Nerve.)

The hearing system of your inner ear consisting of the cochlea and the auditory nerve.

A coding strategy is a series of calculations used by the cochlear implant system to measure the sound that is presented to the microphone, analyze its components, and then determine which electrodes should be stimulated and how they should be stimulated to best represent the original sound. Next, it generates a code that is set to the implanted portion of the system. This code tells the implant which channel address to stimulate within the cochlear implant, when to stimulate it, and how loud that stimulation should be to accurately represent the sound at the microphone. This happens many thousands of times per second. Two coding strategies for example are CIS and SAS.

A counseling therapy that can be used for people suffering from tinnitus. It includes four main techniques—cognitive, distraction, relaxation and imagination.

Captioning speech in real time so hard of hearing people can read the words a speaker says almost as soon as they are said.

A Telecommunications Relay Service operator who facilitates telephone calls between people who are deaf or have limited hearing and other people.

The main drug reference book used by doctors, pharmacists and hospitals in Canada.

A series of hearing tests to evaluate how well a person hears and understands speech. (See also Audiological Evaluation.) For a more in-depth understanding of what a complete audiological evaluation entails, read this article.

The smallest of all the hearing aids. It fits completely in the ear canal. As such it is almost invisible.

A form of automatic gain control in a hearing aid that keep sounds from becoming uncomfortably loud by adding less and less amplification as sounds get louder and louder.

Professional CAN note takers use computers and special software and pre-trained codes to type as much as they can of what a speaker is saying. Since CAN operators cannot keep up with normal speakers, not everything is transcribed. Anyone with good typing skills can summarize what a speaker is saying using a program such as Word so a hard of hearing person can at least get the gist of what the speaker is saying.

Another name for an in-the-ear (ITE) or full-shell hearing aid.

A type of hearing testing used with young children. Children are trained (conditioned) to perform some activity (e.g. dropping a block in a box, pressing a toy button, put a peg in a hole etc.) in response to sounds. The audiologist uses an audiometerset at varying levels of loudness to assess the child’s hearing loss.

Same as Conditioned Audiometry.

Same as Conditioned Audiometry.