If you have a hearing issue, it may be a problem with your ear’s ability to conduct sound or your brain’s ability to translate impulses or both depending on your precise symptoms.
Your ability to process sound is influenced by several factors such as general health, age, brain function, and genetics. If you have the annoying experience being able to hear a person’s voice but not being able to process or understand what that person is saying you might be dealing with one or more of the following kinds of loss of hearing.
Conductive Hearing Loss
When we yank on our ears, continuously swallow, and say again and again to ourselves with increasing aggravation, “something’s in my ear,” we may be experiencing conductive hearing loss. The ear’s ability to conduct sound to the brain is lessened by issues to the outer and middle ear such as wax buildup, ear infections, eardrum damage, and fluid buildup. Depending on the seriousness of problems going on in your ear, you may be able to understand some people, with louder voices, versus hearing partial words from others talking in normal or lower tones.
Sensorineural Hearing Loss
Unlike conductive hearing loss, which impacts the middle and outer ear, Sensorineural hearing loss affects the inner ear. Injury to the inner ear’s hair-like cells or the auditory nerve as well can block sound signals from going to the brain. Voices could sound slurred or unclean to you, and sounds can come across as either too low or too high. If you can’t separate voices from background noise or have difficulty hearing women and children’s voices particularly, then you may be suffering from high-frequency hearing loss.