Better hearing starts with your brain

Your brain is the most important part of your hearing solution. Here's why.

What if there was a way to hear better with less effort for your brain?

Have you ever thought "My hearing is ok, if I just concentrate hard enough"? Or "My current hearing aids are fine, I just get tired easily when using them”?

If your brain is not getting the right sounds to work with, it takes intense effort to create meaning. With BrainHearing™ the brain gets access to the full soundscape, allowing it to focus on the most relevant sound sources. BrainHearing is not about technology or product features. It is about the fundamental understanding of how hearing works – and how your brain makes sense of sound.

Hearing is thinking

You hear with your brain, not with your ears. Hearing, and especially speech understanding, is a cognitive process, not a mechanical one.

The ears receive sounds and it is in the brain that they are processed to give meaning to you. And whenever there are missing sounds, the brain tries to fill the gap – an often difficult and exhausting process. Good hearing isn’t simply a question of making sounds loud enough. It’s about helping your brain understand the sounds you hear. That’s why we’ve moved from an "ear first" to a "brain first" approach to hearing.

Battle against dementia

In mid-life, hearing loss is a risk factor for developing dementia that you can do something about

In fact, more than a third of dementia cases can possibly be prevented or delayed*. This is because the risk of developing dementia is partly influenced by lifestyle factors, which reduce or increase the risk.

Smoking, depression, and physical inactivity are all potentially modifiable risk factors. However, untreated hearing loss is the single most important modifiable risk factor for dementia. The significant role of hearing in mental health is just one of the reasons that our BrainHearing™ approach is so important.

*Livingston et al, 2017

This is what BrainHearing
will do for you

With BrainHearing, the sounds of your life simply become more meaningful.

The basic philosophy of BrainHearing is to support your brain by giving it the conditions it needs to create meaning from sound – instead of overloading it by turning up the volume. This reduces the strain on your brain (the cognitive load) leaving you less tired. It also gives you a more natural and pleasant soundscape, instead of simply amplifying one source of sound.​

How BrainHearing makes a difference for Children

To develop spoken language skills, your child needs access to the fullest possible spectrum of speech sounds and the most complete, clearest auditory signal possible. Oticon’s powerful BrainHearing technologies support the development of a broad range of cognitive skills for children with hearing loss. 

Oticon’s BrainHearing technology delivers consistent sound processing that matches your child’s needs at every stage of development. As your child’s communication skills improve, the improvements can positively affect many areas of his or her life, including school performance, social relationships and even your child’s sense of self-esteem.

Learn why children's hearing is important

How BrainHearing transforms the way you hear 

When sound enters your ear and reaches your brain, there are four fundamental functions the brain carries out to make sense of the sound.

BrainHearing is designed to support your brain in doing all of this:

  1. Orient according to position of sounds, using both ears
  2. Separate sound sources
  3. Focus on what`s important
  4. Recognise what each sound is and make sense of it 

All of this happens simultaneously in the brain.

BrainHearing technology helps the brain transform the sounds of your life into meaning, while preserving the context around you. BrainHearing is supported by a number of innovative features, in a wide variety of hearing aids in the Oticon product portfolio.

OpenSound Navigator gives the brain better conditions to perform

Traditional hearing aid technology is not successful when dealing with complex listening environments involving multiple speakers. When sound sources are many, dynamic and unpredictable, it copes by closing down all sounds except speech coming from the front. This results in the brain not getting the information it needs to access the soundscape, making it impossible for it to focus naturally or switch attention.

The unique OpenSound Navigator, is fast and precise enough to support how the brain makes sense of sound and can handle multiple speakers simultaneously, even in the most complex environments. By providing your brain with better conditions to perform, OpenSound Navigator enhances the listening experience, reduces listening effort, improves speech understanding and your ability to participate actively in conversations with multiple speakers.

See Oticon's latest hearing aids

Hearing aids help keep your brain fit

Active use of hearing aids will make it easier for hearing impaired people to participate in social activities. Social activities stimulate the brain, which decreases the risk of accelerated cognitive decline.

“It’s never too late to act against hearing impairment. But the sooner you treat hearing impairment, the better for your cognition” says Hélène Amieva, Professor at the University of Bordeaux.

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Experience BrainHearing for yourself

Words can only do so much. To fully appreciate BrainHearing, you should let your own brain experience the difference. Ask your local hearing care professional to fit you with Oticon hearing aids featuring BrainHearing technology – and let your brain be the judge.

Find a hearing care professional near you