20211121 : Hearing experiment - results

Today I got a TV in the room. The broken one is still not working. They couldn't get some parts so they will replace the whole TV. This is a temporary arrangement.

So that concludes my hearing experiment formally. It has been almost 4 weeks. Good enough I suppose... Here are the results...

Procedure:

Put on music/ songs that I am very familiar with, a bit loudly on my phone. Keep the phone closer to the right ear. Plug the left ear as tightly as I can. Close the eyes and listen.

Do the above as many times as possible everyday.

Observations:

Unfortunately, I did not do a baseline correctly. But on a scale of 0 - 10, I would peg it between 0 and 0.5 before I started. Some unintelligible noises would come through intermittently and feebly and there was a constant shrill sound (like the one we would get from a picture tube tv with no signal)

After 4 weeks of the listening, I think I can peg it at 3.5 - 4.

The background noise is still there - but has changed from the shrill noise to something we would hear if we held a big sea shell close to the ear. It has reduced a bit in intensity as well.

Inference:

The music therapy worked well - better than expected. The repairmen in the brain certainly benefitted from the help.

Other comments:

When I start doing it, I can hardly hear anything initially. After a few seconds, the sound gradually picks up. It reinforces the "use it or lose it" funda. Basically my brain doesn't bother with the signals coming from the right ear. Why bother to do hard and complex work when there are loud and clear signals being served on a platter by the left ear!

Many sounds (frequencies) are quite distorted. Some are amplified more than others (eg, rythmic drum beats sound louder). Some are reduced (attenuated) quite a lot (eg, there is a song from 'Dil chahta hai' which has the Digiridoo playing - this is more or less gone). And some are completely transformed (eg. When I hear water flowing - eg, when the nurses are pouring from the bottle or somebody opens the tap), it sounds more like sand falling on a thin metal sheet. It's also amplified than it should.

I wanted to compare different types of music - classical, instrumental, pop etc. But I don't know any classical etc well enough to play along in my head to make a fair comparison.

Conclusion:

It was a great experiment with positive results and I intend to continue to do it whenever I can remember (basically have to fight the TV urge)

I could argue it was just a coincidence. But unlikely to have done so suddenly after almost 3 years and so rapidly.

There is however a downside. I used to hear well with only 1 ear earlier. Now with one ear hearing clearly and the other one not clearly, I guess the composite sound that the brain is getting is distorted and makes lesser sense. I hope in the long run, the brain will repair the stereo inputs and won't give up and revert back to mono sounds.

So if can imagine me, lying in my bed, eyes closed, music playing - don't confuse that image to me resting. That's me exercising 😂