Do you hear what I hear?

Abstract

Have you ever wondered if the person next to you hears the same thing you hear? It depends. The response of our ears varies significantly with age because a person's cumulative exposure to noise lessens their ears' ability to respond to sounds. This common form of hearing loss is called presbycusis and is characterized by a significant degradation in the high frequency content of the perceived sound. A series of auditory demonstrations distributed by the Acoustical Testing Center at NASA Glenn Research Center lets you hear what a person with progressively worse presbycusis hears.