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Discovering the BrainHearing technology inside the Oticon Opn™ hearing aid

"by " Albert Stein

Technology has advanced so far that we can walk into a building and instantly connect wirelessly with a multitude of different devices. Traditional technology will soon become a thing of the past, as everyone looks towards ease of functionality and hands-free utility.

Your hearing aids are one such device that are following this trend. Where traditional hearing devices just amplifies sound, we are now offering the new Oticon Opn™ hearing aids, which does much more than just bring sound clarity.

Let's take a look at the intricate technology this small device poses.

Traditional hearing technology is typically fine-tuned to focus on one speaker, suppressing all other sounds in order to provide focus. This gives the user tunnel vision, limited the scope of conversations, especially in a room where there are many people, and multiple streams of conversation.

Imagine walking into a room, and only able to see straight ahead – to look at things to your side, you'd have to turn your whole body. That can be disorientating, and you miss out on valuable conversation opportunities, whether in social or business situations.The Oticon Opn™ will open up the whole room for your ears –  OpenSound Navigator technology employed by the Opn™ device helps to distinguish between speech and background noise, automatically adjusting volume relative to where it receives sounds, from a scope of 360 degrees. It allows you to embrace conversations from multiple speakers, and relieves the processing strain on your brain as you try to make sense of complex social situations.

BrainHearing™is a set of technologies in the Oticon Opn™hearing aid, proven to support the brain make sense of sound.

Hearing is more than just your ears – your brain picks up on sounds and places them to a stored memory. When your brain can only catch fragmented snippets of sound, it takes longer to process the noises into recognisable speech. This extra effort can cause mental fatigue, which can impact everything from work to socialising. The strain of this in everyday life can mean a person is likely to recede from conversing and become withdrawn.

That's where BrainHearing™ comes into play – it's a set of technologies incorporated into the Oticon Opn™ proven to make it easier on the brain.

Through vigorous testing, it has shown that users can understand speech 30 per cent better!* This also reduces listening effort by 20 per cent, and thus, users can easily recall 20 per cent more of conversations. These results are compared to the Alta2 Pro, which is already one of the most advanced hearing solutions available.

Don't let its small size fool you – it's an extremely powerful, compact device

BrainHearing™ technology is about understanding how hearing works and how the brain makes sense of sound. By providing the brain the conditions it needs to create meaning from sound, it reduces the strain on your brain. Ultimately, it's a designed solution to support the brain in performing four key functions:

  • Orientation – allowing your brain draw meaning based on your spatial awareness to pick up the direction of sounds.

  • Separation – providing a distinction between what is background noise and what is speech.

  • Focus – offers a complete, clear and balanced soundscape without feeling overwhelmed.

  • Recognise – rebalances sound to make them more distinct and easier to recognise and place into memory

The Oticon Opn™ draws on a BrainHearing™ feature, called OpenSound Navigator, to process sounds up to 50 times faster, supporting your brain's mental capabilities so you are less inhibited by your hearing loss. This speed is driven by the ground-breaking Velox platform, which continuously scans your surroundings from all directions at 100 times per second. It also offers market-leading resolution with 64 frequency bands, making more than 30,000 calculations with each ticking minute.

You can't deny that this is a huge step in hearing innovation, offering a rich soundscape that traditional technology can only hint at. It could be just the device you need to stimulate and relieve your brain, so don't hesitate to get in touch with us for more information.

You could be due for a hearing test. Give us a call on 0800 001 726, or request an appointment online.