How Insects are Revolutionizing Hearing Aids

Today’s hearing aids have come a long way; present models are highly effective and feature exceptional digital capabilities, such as wireless connectivity, that drastically enhance a person’s ability to hear along with their overall quality of life.

But there is still room for improvement.

Specifically, in some instances hearing aids have some challenges with two things:

1. Locating the source of sound
2. Eliminating background noise

But that may soon change, as the most current research in hearing aid design is being guided from a surprising source: the world of insects.

Why insects hold the key to better hearing aids

Both mammals and insects have the equivalent problem in terms of hearing: the conversion and amplification of sound waves into information the brain can use. What scientists are discovering is that the method insects use to solve this problem is in ways more powerful than our own.

The internal organs of hearing in an insect are smaller and more sensitive to a greater range of frequencies, enabling the insect to identify sounds humans cannot hear. Insects also can recognize the directionality and distance of sound in ways more exact than the human ear.

Hearing aid design has customarily been directed by the way humans hear, and hearing aids have tended to offer straightforward amplification of incoming sound and transmission to the middle ear. But researchers are now asking a completely different question.

Borrowing inspiration from the natural world, they’re questioning how nature—and its hundreds of millions of years of evolution—has attempted to solve the problem of detecting and perceiving sound. By analyzing the hearing mechanism of assorted insects, such as flies, grasshoppers, and butterflies, researchers can borrow the best from each to produce a brand new mechanism that can be put to use in the design of new and improved miniature microphones.

Insect-inspired miniature directional microphones

Researchers from University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland, and the MRC/CSO Institute for Hearing Research (IHR) at Glasgow Royal Infirmary, will be testing hearing aids outfitted with a unique kind of miniature microphone inspired by insects.

The hope is that the new hearing aids will accomplish three things:

1. More energy-efficient microphones and electronics that will ultimately result in smaller hearing aids, lower power usage, and extended battery life.
2. The ability to more accurately locate the source and distance of sound.
3. The ability to focus on specific sounds while reducing background noise.

Researchers will also be trying out 3D printing techniques to improve the design and ergonomics of the new hearing aids.

The future of hearing aids

For the majority of their history, hearing aids have been designed with the human hearing mechanism in mind, in an effort to replicate the normal human hearing experience. Now, by asking a different set of questions, researchers are building a new set of goals. Instead of attempting to RESTORE normal human hearing, perhaps they can AUGMENT it.