Deaf hearing refers to a condition in which
deaf
Deafness has varying definitions in cultural and medical contexts. In medical contexts, the meaning of deafness is hearing loss that precludes a person from understanding spoken language, an audiological condition. In this context it is written ...
individuals are able to react to an
auditory stimulus, without actually being able to hear it.
When patients are completely deaf in both
ear
In vertebrates, an ear is the organ that enables hearing and (in mammals) body balance using the vestibular system. In humans, the ear is described as having three parts: the outer ear, the middle ear and the inner ear. The outer ear co ...
s they begin to rely more strongly on their other
senses
A sense is a biological system used by an organism for sensation, the process of gathering information about the surroundings through the detection of stimuli. Although, in some cultures, five human senses were traditionally identified as su ...
.
Because hearing relies on external
sound wave
In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid.
In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' by the ...
s, a deaf patient will feel the vibrations, rather than relying on what would normally be perceived as sound. As a patient relies on "feeling" sounds rather than hearing them, they
subconscious
In psychology, the subconscious is the part of the mind that is not currently of focal awareness. The term was already popularized in the early 20th century in areas ranging from psychology, religion and spirituality. The concept was heavily popu ...
ly hear with their sense of touch, therefore reacting to auditory stimuli without actually hearing sound.
Deaf patients also adapt to their disability by relying more on sight. While a patient with normal hearing relies on sound to perceive different things than they would by sight, the deaf use their sense of sight to observe things that would usually be perceived through hearing. For example, if a person were to walk into a room from an angle that could not be seen, a person with normal hearing would most likely detect them from hearing the door open. A deaf person might rely on changes in lighting patterns or the sympathetic movement of other objects in the room.
Similar compensations have long been noted among the blind.
See also
*
Blindsight
Blindsight is the ability of people who are cortically blind to respond to visual stimuli that they do not consciously see due to lesions in the primary visual cortex, also known as the striate cortex or Brodmann Area 17. The term was coined ...
References
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External links
National Health Service: Causes of Hearing LossHearing Protection Protects Against Hearing Loss
Deafness