Hearing Disabilities

How Does The Ear Work?

http://www.childrensent.com/cochlear-implantation.html
The ear is made up of three parts: the outer ear, middle ear, and inner ear. The outer ear is the part of the ear that we see, as well as the ear canal. It captures sound energy and funnels it to the ear drum. The middle ear is an air pocket underneath the ear drum and contains three hearing bones. Sound waves hitting the ear drum create vibrations that are transmitted down the hearing bones to the inner ear (cochlea).

The cochlea is a fluid filled structure with sensory cells.

The hair cells translate the vibrations into stimulation for the auditory nerve. The auditory nerve then takes this information In this way, the inner ear changes the sound vibrations into signals the brain understands. In children with severe or profound deafness, the hair cells and/or part of the auditory nerve are damaged, preventing the sound signals from being transmitted to the brain. This is called sensorineural hearing loss. patterns of to the brain.

Causes
http://www.asha.org/public/hearing/disorders/causes.htm
Congenital Factors
Genetics Autosomal Dominant Autosomal Recessive X-Linked Hearing Loss Intrauterine Infections Complications with rh Factor in Blood Prematurity Maternal Diabetes

Toxemia During Pregnancy

Lack of Oxygen

Acquired Causes

Indicating Factors

Frequent or recurrent ear infections Speech delay

Family history of hearing loss (hearing loss can be inherited)

Syndromes known to be associated with hearing loss

Down syndrome, the Alport syndrome, and Crouzon syndrome

Infectious diseases that cause hearing loss

meningitis, measles,

and cytomegalovirus [CMV] infection

Medical treatments that may have hearing loss as a side effect, including some antibiotics and some chemotherapy agents Poor school performance

Diagnosis of a learning disability or other disorder

Autism

or Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD).

Solutions
With hearing loss, sometimes it is only temporary and can be resolved with ear tubes. Other times, it calls for further measures, such as hearing aids, or sign language (depending on the route you as a parent choose to steer your child), and, if extreme enough, cochlear implants.

Hearing Aids
http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/hearing/pages/hearingaid.aspx#hearingaid_01 A hearing aid is a small electronic device that makes some sounds louder so that a person with hearing loss can listen, communicate, and participate more easily in everyday life. Hearing aids are made up of three parts: the microphone, the amplifier, and the speaker. Sound is received through a microphone and converted to electrical signals which are then sent to the amplifier. The amplifier increases the power of the signals and then sends them to the ear through a speaker. A hearing aid magnifies sound vibrations entering the ear. Surviving hair cells detect the larger vibrations and convert them into neural signals that are passed along to the brain. The greater the damage to a persons hair cells, the more severe the hearing loss, and the greater the hearing aid amplification needed to make up the difference. There are practical limits to the amount of amplification a hearing aid can provide. If the inner ear is too damaged, even large vibrations will not be converted into neural signals. In this situation, a hearing aid would be ineffective.

Cochlear Implants
http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/hearing/pages/coch.aspx
A cochlear implant is a small electronic device that can help to provide a sense of sound to a person who is profoundly deaf or severely hard-of-hearing.

The implant consists of an external portion that sits behind the ear and a second portion that is surgically placed under the skin.
An implant has the following parts: A microphone, which picks up sound from the environment. A speech processor, which selects and arranges sounds picked up by the microphone.

A transmitter and receiver/stimulator, which receive signals from the speech processor and convert them into electric impulses.
An electrode array, which is a group of electrodes that collects the impulses from the stimulator and sends them to different regions of the auditory nerve. An implant does not restore normal hearing. Instead, it can give a deaf person a useful representation of sounds in the environment and help him or her to understand speech.

Cochlear implants bypass damaged portions of the ear and directly stimulate the auditory nerve. Signals generated by the implant are sent by way of the auditory nerve to the brain, which recognizes the signals as sound.
Hearing through a cochlear implant is different from normal hearing and takes time to learn or relearn. However, it allows many people to recognize warning signals, understand other sounds in the environment, and enjoy a conversation in person or by telephone.

Sign Language
http://www.omniglot.com/language/articles/reasonstolearnasl.htm
Sign language is the way they communicate visually. Using their hands and certain gestures, fingerspelling, etc, the deaf community has created not only a language but a language style all their own. In the United States, there are two main types of sign language. American Sign Language and English Sign Language. ESL is based on written English. It also has signs for small English words like 'I' and 'the'. ASL, however, is strictly its own language. The grammar and structure of the sentences is different. For example, instead of saying "the green tractor" ASL users would say "tractor green". Some things are flipped, and some are

missing. A lot of 'small' words are not used and there are a lot more gestures than finger spelling.
One difficulty in learning sign language is that different areas have different signs. There are standards, sure, but variations are abundant. The beauty of sign language, however, is that you don't have to be accurate. Your facial expressions and movements mean way more than the words you say. That's another issue to watch out for. In sign language, there is no punctuation. It's all in the expression. A cocked head, a raised eyebrow, even a shrug can indicate a question being asked.