While concussion is a condition that everyone can experience with a hard blow to the head area, it mostly happens to professional athletes and soldiers. Known symptoms of a concussion, which can have serious consequences if left untreated, include headache, dizziness, nausea and confusion. But researchers discovered that a concussion can also cause permanent hearing impairment.
Neuroscience professor Nina Kraus, who states that our brain makes a great effort to perceive the sounds in the outside world, states that 15-20% of concussions that occur cause long-term hearing problems. Kraus explains that the signal coming from both ears is processed in the brain in order to understand the source of any sound; He states that features such as volume, tone and timing should be distinguishable. However, concussions have been observed to prevent the brain from distinguishing these features of sound to a large extent.
The effects of a concussion can last for ten years:
Kraus’ lab, Brainvolts, has been conducting a five-year study to understand how concussion affects the hearing process. 500 athletes tested within the scope of this research were able to distinguish different sounds in low-voice environments. But when the athletes tried to distinguish speech sounds between increasingly loud voices, they failed the test. In this test, which the researchers called “noise-embedded-speech sound,” individuals with normal brain functions could easily distinguish sounds. Emphasizing the importance of these experiments to test brain health, Kraus states that most athletes recover from concussions within a few weeks.
Concussions experienced by soldiers on battlefields can be more permanent. It is stated that many young American soldiers who served in bomb-exploded areas during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have hearing complaints. When the soldiers were examined, it was seen that there was no problem in their ears, but the explosions caused a concussion. Soldiers with hearing complaints could not distinguish speech sounds from ambient sounds, and could not make sense of words when spoken quickly. It has been observed that the symptoms of hearing problems caused by a concussion on the battlefield in some soldiers persisted even after a period of ten years. Kraus continues to work to expand treatment avenues in this area, along with new research.
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