Brain training key to restoring hearing, expert says

When it comes to hearing health care, Palmetto Family Hearing Center in Fort Mill takes a unique approach.

Hearing loss and the brain are often connected, which is why the practice uses brain training to help patients hear, listen and communicate better, said Gary Fike Jr., a doctor of audiology, director of audiology and owner of Palmetto Family Hearing Center.

While the practice still employs standard pure tone testing, Fike and his staff go beyond that with questionnaires and brain training exercises designed to test how a person hears in real sound conditions, such as speech and noise, he said.

“(Pure tone testing) doesn’t tell us how they are hearing in noise and that’s generally what most people complain about,” he said. “We do testing in noise to see how they do in that environment.”

The testing allows Fike and his team to determine if a patient’s hearing loss is related strictly to hearing issues, an inability to process sounds well or both, he said.

The computer-based brain training exercises challenges patients to pick up voices and sentences in background noise, Fike said. They range from sounds that are blotted out and patients have to fill in to picking out specific sentences mixed in with other noise and voices.

“We are exercising the parts of the brain that process sound and interpret speech,” he said. “It’s really neat.”

Testing beyond beeps and tones allows Fike to see how a patient does in a real life situation.

“We are trying to interpret what in their life they are having issues with,” he said. “Some people have really good hearing but aren’t able to process the sound in noise and that’s where brain training comes into play.”

Finding the right causes of hearing loss and proper treatments takes time, one of the reasons Fike opened his own practice after 16 years in the industry.

“We’re spending a good amount of time with patients,” he said. “We saw a need in this area and wanted to make sure we are helping patients in the way they need to be helped.”

The practice’s use of a brain training program is unique among the hearing health world, Fike said. The program helps patients retrain their brains to focus on speech in noise and adjusts to how the person is doing, becoming progressively more difficult.

“It’s like physical training for the brain,” he said.

Not being able to hear or process sounds often can lead to degenerative effects in the brain, Fike said. Studies have shown that people with hearing loss are 30 percent to 40 percent more likely to develop dementia and the onset is 3.2 years sooner for someone with untreated hearing loss than for someone with treated or no hearing loss, according to an article by Johns Hopkins Medicine.

“Our overall health is affected by our ability to hear,” Fike said. “A big part of hearing is within the brain.”

Hearing loss can affect a person socially and is often connected to withdrawal and a lack of stimulation to the brain, he said.

“Hearing in general connects us to people,” Fike said. “When you have good hearing, you are more likely to be connected to people, which then helps us with our social well-being.”

Palmetto Family Hearing Center also performs physical examinations, helps patients set their hearing aids to meet their needs, tackle tinnitus and refer patients when medically necessary, Fike said. The patient’s primary care doctor is always kept in the loop.

“We are very medically based,” he said.

Dr. Brian Karriker of Mooresville Family and Emergency Dentistry has been seeing Fike for six years and followed him when he opened the Fort Mill practice. Karriker, who has a rare disorder, was born with hearing loss.

He said Fike was able to find him the best hearing aid for him and adjust it to what he needed.

“He knows what he’s doing and I have a lot of confidence in his work,” Karriker said. “Not a lot of audiologists are familiar with my type of hearing loss. He’s great.”

The center’s extensive array of testing ensures they find the right treatment for a patient’s hearing loss, Fike said.

“We have always thought of hearing loss as just an inconvenience, but we are seeing its effect on overall health,” he said. “We just want to help people any way we can. We’re big community people.”

This story was originally published June 20, 2016 at 2:47 PM with the headline "Brain training key to restoring hearing, expert says."