Dr. Michael Kilgard

I mean, hearing loss is common.

It's, of course, highly correlated with growing old, which is a good thing.

No, they're not the same thing.

A lot of things accumulate to cause damage to the hair cells in your ear, taking on antibiotics, having a viral infection, traumatic insults, all those things.

But the number one is just growing old.

So if you grow old enough, things start falling apart.

And one of the things that falls apart are these hair cells.

These are incredibly precise.

The vibration these things are doing are the width of one atom.

Like that's how tiny, the smallest vibration you could detect.

The hair cell is only moving back and forth by an atom.

I mean, it's incredibly precise.

And so they get damaged.

They're just super sensitive.

When they get damaged, it's typically the high frequencies that get damaged, whether you're going to rock concerts or shooting a gun or playing your horn loud.

It's the high frequencies where things vibrate the fastest that get most injured.

And people start noticing they can't hear as well in a crowded restaurant or whatever else.

You go and get an audiogram with an audiologist, and they'll tell you, yes, above 8 kilohertz or above 4 kilohertz, you now need 20 times more sound pressure to hear it.

Okay, you can still hear, it's just not as good.

The thing is the brain is plastic, as we've been saying, is such a good thing.