Brain Fitness Programs

Just as you need to exercise your body to keep it performing well and at a high level, you also need to exercise your brain to optimize it’s ability to work for you. Hearing aids are just one component of the service that I offer to my patients. I find that many people are assisted by hearing aids alone but many also need other services to adequately address their hearing needs. It has always been my goal to offer the most up to date products, services and systems to assist you in hearing and understanding the very best that you can. During the last year, I have been researching many new areas and have decided to offer the following cutting edge programs to provide my patients with that extra help that may be needed.

Programs specific to people with hearing loss

Five Keys:  When you purchase hearing aids from us you will have the option of enrolling in the Five Keys program see separate page with more info regarding this. Learn More

Amptify:  This is a full rehabilitation program that is available through an app that walks you through games and activities that can assist you with hearing in noise.

AudioCardio™ is an evidence-based mobile app that delivers inaudible sound therapies designed to maintain and strengthen your hearing while providing relief from tinnitus by stimulating the cells inside your ear. It’s like physical therapy for your hearing.

Reading out LOUD

Reading: out loud or having someone read out loud to you 5-10 mins a day. Have someone sit across from you, close your eyes and as the other person reads a sentence, repeat back EXACTLY what they said. If you get a word wrong, have them repeat it, if you still get it wrong, open your eyes and have them repeat it. See Speech tracking for further instructions.

This is a fantastic exercise for you!

Speech tracking

Want to build your listening and communication skills? A great and easy way to do that is with speech tracking. Speech tracking is a method of practicing and evaluating your listening skills, and can also help you and your communication partner develop more efficient methods of fixing a communication breakdown. It involves basically listening to a person say some words, and then repeating those words back to them. All you need is a partner and a book, and you can do it just about anywhere.

Here’s what to do:

Speech tracking is easy. All you need is someone to talk with, and a book, newspaper, magazine, or other piece of text  Choose a story that you’re interested in. Good stories for speech tracking tend to have fairly simple language and are about a topic you like.

  1. Sit down with your partner:
  2. Sit in front of your partner, if you want to practice both lip-reading and listening.
  3. Sit side-by-side with your partner, if you want to practice listening alone.
  4. Make a note of where they are starting to read on the text.
  5. Set a timer to go off after a certain period of time, for example 10-20 minutes.
  6. Have your partner read back a short bit of text: short, as in just 3 or 4 words or a short sentence is enough.
  7. Repeat back exactly what you heard.
  8. If you got every word right, have your partner continue to read more from the text. As you get more confident, have them increase the number of words they say or the speed at which they speak.
  9. If you get a word wrong, use some clarification techniques (that are described further down) until you get every word right. Then, have your partner continue to read more from the text.
  10. When the timer is up, mark where your partner finished reading. Count the number of words you successfully repeated back, and write that down. Divide that number by 10–or whatever the number of minutes you set on the timer was—and you’ll have your “tracking per minute” speed—as you keep practicing speech tracking in the next weeks or months, you can compare your results to gauge how well you are improving.

Clarification Techniques

Sometimes you won’t hear every word correctly. That’s okay! Here are some ways that you and your partner can help you to hear those words that you might have misheard.

  • Have your partner say just a few words, and emphasize the ones that you missed.
  • Ask your partner a specific question about the word you’re not sure you heard correctly: “Am I hearing the word ‘angle’ correctly?”
  • Have your partner say just the word you misheard. Then, have them say the sentence as normal.
  • Have your partner give you a clue about what the word means, like its definition or a synonym. Then, have them say the sentence as normal.
  • Have your partner add extra visual cues, like lip-reading, or facial and body expressions.

Programs not specific to people with hearing loss

Brain HQ. POSITSCIENCE.COM: The Brain Fitness Program Classic Brain HQ https://www.positscience.com/why-brainhq is Posit Science’s original program for the auditory system of the brain. Auditory processing is a fundamental root of brain fitness because much of the important information we take in each day—and that we want to respond to, remember, and use later—comes in through speech. The Brain Fitness Program improves the quality and quantity of the information your brain absorbs from your ears. You can go to https://www.positscience.com/why-brainhq and take a free test to see how well you process.