Tuning Hearing Aids: was Re: Inexpensive hearing aids

In a message dated 3/25/2004 1:49:11 PM Eastern Standard Time, br_auditory@HOTMAIL.COM writes:

For example, if I have a patient with panic and anxiety disorders and a patient who is a professional musician, even though they may have the exact same audiogram, their settings on the hearing aids will be completely different including the type of hearing aid. The P and A will be drastically below the expected settings and the PM will be above. This is due to their specific neurophsyiology makeup that give substantial control over his system in the musician and the lack of control in the P&A. The neuroanatomical differences in musicians vs. non-musicians have been established numerous times. With a 25% greater response to piano harmonics than pure tones, I need to try to match the hearing aids to musical harmonics instead of the pure tones we use during testing. Additionally, the counselling that would go into encouraging and maintaining use of the hearing aid is also going to markedly different.

Barbara,

I'm with Tom...I'm also curious as to exactly what you mean by fitting to "piano harmonics?" Do you have specific references on this technique you could share or is this something you do on your own? Also, exactly what do you mean by "below" and "above" expected settings? And I'm not sure what you mean by "25% greater response to piano harmonics?"

Being a musician myself, I work with a lot of HOH musicians. I am very well aware of the neurophysiological differences between musicians and non-musicians, but I never came across this exact phrasing (or, at least, not that I can readily recall).

Thanks.