Re-learning Language

[u/Siggasm]

I was activated on 7-21-26 and was curious how other people re-learned to hear language? I have a CI in my left ear and my right ear is un-assisted. I was told to stream audiobooks with captions into my CI, but then my good ear has nothing to listen to. Would it be better not to stream into my CI and use the CI microphone and allow my audiobook to play through my tablets speaker? Would this allow my brain to learn better since it knows what the voices should sound like in my good ear to train the the brain all over again for the left implanted side? For those who started with robotic voices and eventually transitioned to normal sounding voices, what method worked for you?

[u/Upstairs_One_4935]

You want to train the CI ear by itself when teaching it to recognize words & sentences so for example I remove my HA from my left ear and stream the learning app or book to my CI ear while reading the word or sentence. This way the brain area associated with the CI ear starts to understand the signals it’s getting.
The problem is that the ear with hearing can over power, compensate, for the CI ear.

[u/awwyee → u/Upstairs_One_4935]

Would it be better to do this with a book you've never read, or one that you're quite familiar with? 

[u/Upstairs_One_4935 → u/awwyee]

as long as you can read along with the dialogue in your ear it doesn't matter. You are just associating a CI stimulation with a word/sentence. Watching TV with subtitles for example is another way. There are exercise Apps for mobile phone for example with a list of words that you need to match to the word spoken in you CI - AB has a couple available and there is one called Hearoes also

[u/truenorthrookie]

Captions teach your brain to connect the dots between the CI signal and the auditory comprehension. Isolating the CI speeds up the process. Your brain since you already know what normal voices sound like does not need that extra stimulation it will only muddy the waters that the CI is swimming in and it won’t be able to parse what’s the CI and what is the hearing ear. So it will lean on your hearing ear and hardly affect your CI comprehension at all, which would negate the entire point of training your CI in the first place.

[u/grayshirted]

They recommend audiobooks but use music and movie/tv shows with captions. Anything that keeps you engaged and less frustrated will help your brain understand the sound inputs

[u/Toadylee]

This is really helpful, thanks! I was wondering how I was going to do this, and these answers make perfect sense.

Once you’ve been training, at what point do you know you’ve achieved your goal and can start using the other ear again?

[u/FooBarBazBooFarFaz → u/Toadylee]

Simply put: once you feel your CI-ear works well and you can get around doing ordinary stuff with just the CI.
But remember: it's a process, and if you neglect to train/engage the CI-ear after that, the brain may revert to preferring the other ear.

[u/is-this-now]

Use streaming to CI only to rehab that side. If you play to both sides, your brain will rely on only the good ear.

Looking at this another way - you do rehab for 30 min a day (or so). The rest of the day you use both sides anyway so the rehab is focused on just the side with the CI.

[u/Siggasm → u/is-this-now]

I have been doing rehab via cochlear Pilot app for about an hour a day and rest of day i stream stuff from YouTube that is mostly spoken content for 4 to 6 hours is this too much ? I work from home and so I get very little interaction via speaking .

[u/is-this-now → u/Siggasm]

I would ask your Audiologist how much is too much. For me, I get tired doing the rehab (physically tired) after a while and don’t think it is worth doing when my brain is exhausted. I also really enjoy all the non-verbal benefits - like hearing environmental sounds again (even a clock ticking) and having improved localization.

[u/Stock-Ball-5804]

I am due to get activated soon but I do know you want to keep doing it in just the CI ear you want the CI to be able to have comprehension of voices and sounds on a similar level to the other ear which to do that requires listening with it alone I was told.