Technology for Hearing Evaluation

The hearing system is composed of several components that, by means of a physiological process, break down the broad spectrum of frequencies and intensities of sounds from the environment (speech, music, signals and noise) into frequency components and temporal patterns. These acoustic signals are transmitted to the temporal lobes of the Central Nervous System by electric stimuli to generate the neural message (Salesa et al., 2005). The hearing process utilizes acoustic, mechanical and electrical principles, and in addition analyzes sound waves, removes noise and compares these with signals that have been previously registered in the memory of the subject. In this manner, we are able to know when a person is speaking, when we are hearing a musical note from a violin or a flute, or when a bird is singing.