Enhanced hearing

[becomingagodo]

Has their been any cases where someone hearing can increase. If anybody has seen Heroes t.v. program, on one episode a woman could hear sound miles away. Or say if you could hear a pin drop in another room, when a normal person would hear nothing. Would this be classed as paranormal and could you win the prize money if you could prove you had advance hearing. I have been looking for a rational anwser to enhance hearing, but can't find anything except sometimes sound is louder when you wake up. Any comments.

 

[chillzero]

I have exceptionally good hearing, which oten freaks people out. I would love to get a million dollars for that, but I don't think it is paranormal. How would you lay down parameters as to when you cross the line from 'exceptionally good' hearing, to some kind of superpower hearing?

Unfortunately for me, I also have Central Auditory Processing Disorder, whihc often makes my good hearing more of a curse. For a while back in my new-age healer and tarot reader days, this led to a belief that I could hear people's thoughts - as I was able to hear quite far off conversations even while trying to concentrate on something else, or even talking to someone else.

 

[Cuddles]

It depends what you mean by "enhanced". Do you mean someone who used to have poor hearing but suddenly finds it much better? Someone who had normal hearing and suddenly finds it much better? Someone who can hear quiet things that would normally only be audible under different conditions, such as a pin dropping in a crowded room? Someone who can hear things that shouldn't be audible at all, like a spider's footsteps? For all execpt the latter I would say they are certainly not paranormal. Even hearing sounds over large distances is not paranormal. It is possible for atmospheric conditions to transmit sound many miles even though they are not audible at locations in between. Bear in mind that human ears are actually very sensitive and detect a lot more than we experience conciously. If a pin dropping in a room is normally audible, it is still audible when drowned out by other noise. You might normally filter out quieter noises, but the sound waves are still there and there would be nothing paranormal about detecting them, although it would be very interesting from a cognitive point of view.

What exactly is it that you think you can do? You need to be much more specific before we can tell if it is paranormal or not.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

I have exceptionally good hearing, which oten freaks people out. I would love to get a million dollars for that, but I don't think it is paranormal.

Me too. It came in handy when I used to work as an interpreter for the Deaf.
I used to love it when people called me a "deaf interpreter". I said at least adequate hearing is pretty much a requirement for the job.

For me, good hearing comes with low tolerance for loud sounds. I get downright angry at the absurd volume levels in most cinemas. I've worn earplugs in classrooms when a teacher or someone has an exceptionally loud voice.

 

[Soapy Sam]

Like any sense, there are two aspects to hearing:-
1. Sensitivity.
2. Processing.
We gain nothing by amplifying sensitivity if the brain can't usefully process the information because it is swamped by noise. That's the biggest problem of hearing aids- they amplify background noise as well as the signal of interest and an already compromised hearing system is simply swamped.

Even the most sooper-dooper ear cannot extract useful information from a signal if the signal : noise ratio is too low. In air, thermal motion of molecules will degrade any compression signal in short order.

Just as a bionic man can't lift an elephant, because even if he can exert enough force to lift it, the resulting force will merely push him into the ground, so there are practical limits to how much sound you can shove through an ear and to how low a signa l: noise ratio you can extract meaning from.
That said, we can improve quite a bit on human average hearing, without major effort. Cup both hands behind your ears and you instantly hear an improved sound from ahead. Move your ears apart a couple of feet (By sticking ear trumpets in them) and your ability to resolve direction from sound improves. But both types of improvement only work up to a point before confusion sets in.
When we are young, we generally have excellent high frequency hearing. This decreases considerably with age. As a kid I could tell if my aunt was using her gas stove while I was on a bus 40 feet or so from her kitchen, because I could hear the ultrasonic whistle the burner made. These days I'd be lucky to hear the bus.

 

[CptColumbo]

What?

 

[chillzero]

Like any sense, there are two aspects to hearing:-
1. Sensitivity.
2. Processing.
We gain nothing by amplifying sensitivity if the brain can't usefully process the information because it is swamped by noise. That's the biggest problem of hearing aids- they amplify background noise as well as the signal of interest and an already compromised hearing system is simply swamped.

That's exactly what CAPD is like; swamped by noise.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Does CAPD stay the same, or does it get better or worse over time?

When I worked as an interpreter, some of the older profoundly deaf from birth folks sometimes had very magical ideas about hearing. Since they're accustomed to my ability to say someone is out in the hall (because I can hear them), it wasn't too far fetched for them to think I'd have other knowledge that I couldn't possibly have.

On the other hand, the ability to eavesdrop on ASL conversations from across a noisy restaurant is pretty cool.

 

[chillzero]

Does CAPD stay the same, or does it get better or worse over time?

It's incurable, but you can learn techniques for handling the sound overload. I no longer have nervous breakdowns trying to listen to trainers, or in meetings if they are in rooms next to roads, or with air conditioning (or both ). It gets worse when the sufferer is stressed.

 

[EeneyMinnieMoe]

You guys are very lucky. I was born with mediocre hearing and it got a whole lot worse from sticking in Q-tips too deeply and playing music too loudly on my headphones. Nowadays, people are always telling me to keep the radio or TV down cause I don't realize how loud it really is.

 

[SusanB-M1]

Hearing - a subject at the top of my agenda recently! Since my sight reduced to one=eyed peripheral vision, people ask me whether my hearing has improved. Well, of course, it hasn't, because I'm getting older, but what I say is that I pay more attention to it. I can hear most things, but there are areas where it is a bit muffled.

Following a proper audiology test last year, and being counted as a priority because I cannot see people's mouths when they are speaking, I had one hearing aid in January and the other two days ago. So this morning when I did my usual early Sunday morning walk, I was enjoying full stereo, supersonic sound!! Yes, it increases all sounds, but I am told, and am already learning, that the brain adapts to picking out the voice of the person I'm listening to.

One of my perpetual themes is that I don't wan to miss anything, so the hearing aids are a great help there. But I do not need them all the time of course.

In fact, I think from now on I shall be hearing better than I did when I was young!

 

[SusanB-M1]

That said, we can improve quite a bit on human average hearing, without major effort. Cup both hands behind your ears and you instantly hear an improved sound from ahead.

I often do this - to the amusement of my granddaughters! I was hoping that I could have a proper ear trumpet from the NHS, but I think the audiologist was too young to know what I meant! I wonder if they are available through eBay... I have never looked at the site so have no idea. I would be quite happy to look a bit eccentric!

*******

I had never heard of that CAPD before. That must be very difficult to deal with. The BBC 'Ouch Talk' MB site has a 'See, hear' section and I have looked at it a few times and asked, for instance, about listening to music with hearing aids, as it sounds a bit 'tinny'.

 

[hipparchia]

It would be fun to have a pair of large pointy ears, one gets much more sound this way

That said, I can hear the high tone a TV makes even before I hear the words of the TV program.

 

[cloudshipsrule]

"That said, I can hear the high tone a TV makes even before I hear the words of the TV program."

I was going to post a question about this. I can also hear the high pitch of a television (CRT) even if it's in another room. I wondered how many other people could hear this.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

This is how I remember it from high school (pre-1980):
hair cells in the outer part of the cochlea (the outer spirals) are "tuned" for higher frequencies, while those in the inner spirals pick up lower sounds.

The reason I remember this from high school is that we did a demo that sticks in my mind. We played some rock music up to a certain decibel reading (measured by a decibel meter) with the treble at max and the bass at min. We then played the same piece of music with the bass at max and the treble at min while gradually increasing the volume. We asked the class to say when they thought the volume was equal to the first time. It turned out that the "bassier" run seemed equal to the first when it was actually at a much higher decibel reading.

 

[Soapy Sam]

Again, I could (hear TVs whistling) when young, but both my hearing and TV design have changed. I don't know if flat screen TVs generate such a tone. Is it a charging capacitor? Flashguns do something similar.

Susan- I once experimented with two huge horns from wild cattle that were lying around in a museum. They had been made into actual Robin Hood-type huntinghorns, but the mouthpieces were missing. It was just like the first time I heard stereo earphones. Loudness increased, but also directional sense. Lots of reverb and echo though. What was really funny was if I turned one horn around to point backwards. It was really disorientating. Were you ever in an office full of trimphones, when one rings and everyone looks helplessly at each other, because nobody could tell which one was ringing?

 

[MortFurd]

This is how I remember it from high school (pre-1980):
hair cells in the outer part of the cochlea (the outer spirals) are "tuned" for higher frequencies, while those in the inner spirals pick up lower sounds.

The reason I remember this from high school is that we did a demo that sticks in my mind. We played some rock music up to a certain decibel reading (measured by a decibel meter) with the treble at max and the bass at min. We then played the same piece of music with the bass at max and the treble at min while gradually increasing the volume. We asked the class to say when they thought the volume was equal to the first time. It turned out that the "bassier" run seemed equal to the first when it was actually at a much higher decibel reading.

Right-o. The typical ear is most sensitive to sounds from 1kHz up to around 10kHz. The ear is very insensitive to bass sounds.

Wikipedia has some nifty charts that illustrate the sensitivity quite well.

 

[Cuddles]

Right-o. The typical ear is most sensitive to sounds from 1kHz up to around 10kHz. The ear is very insensitive to bass sounds.

Wikipedia has some nifty charts that illustrate the sensitivity quite well.

More like 20kHz. Young people with good hearing can usually hear up to about 22kHz (hence the cutoff there for most audio recording). The ear is less sensitive at very high frequencies, but before old age kicks in the sensitivity actually increases from 10kHz up to about 16-17kHz. This is shown on the Wiki graph, but it isn't too clear because of the log scale.

"That said, I can hear the high tone a TV makes even before I hear the words of the TV program."

I was going to post a question about this. I can also hear the high pitch of a television (CRT) even if it's in another room. I wondered how many other people could hear this.

Most people below the age of about 25-30. Even without causing extra damage to your ears, high frequency sensitivity decreases with age because the small hairs that respond to them are easier to damage than the larger ones that respond to low frequencies. I'm not sure exactly what frequency CRTs emit, but I would guess it's close to 20kHZ.