We all know headphones can be bad for your hearing if you listen to sounds too loudly in such close proximity to your ears. But a BBC report suggests that a new health scare could be emerging around the noise-canceling feature that’s hugely popular in modern earphones.
The article considers whether the technology could essentially be rewiring the brains of people who regularly try to tune out pesky background noise using noise cancelation — reporting on the experience of a 25-year-old British woman who found she had trouble focusing on sounds and was subsequently diagnosed with audio processing disorder (APD). A previous hearing test came back normal. APD is a neurological condition affecting the brain’s ability to understand sounds and spoken words.
Five audiology departments in the U.K.’s National Health Service told the BBC that there has been a rise in the number of young people referred to them with similar issues related to their ability to process sounds. So the question is: what’s interfering with normal brain functioning in such cases?
One theory posited by the article is that noise-canceling tech could be leading to the brain forgetting how to filter sounds itself. The patient’s audiologist has also called for more research into the impact of the technology.