An audiogram is a map of your hearing on a printed grid. Each ear is tested to find out the quietest sound it can hear of particular frequencies. To hear a sound, your ear must be able to transmit that “disturbance” in the air through your middle ear to the cochlea and from the cochlea to nerves in the brain. Sound travels through the nervous system. It doesn’t just stop at some particular destination in the brain or at a certain organ. Sound energy is more like a stream of electricity that turns on lights and appliances in your house and shuts down only when your ears “go to sleep” and disconnect that stream at the main switch. What that means is that a tiny muscle in the middle ear — the stapedius muscle — relaxes, which shuts down the sound flow and has a domino effect throughout the body.
The quietest volume of a sound frequency that you can hear is called your threshold of hearing for that frequency.
The frequencies of sound tested are listed across the top of a graph called an audiogram. Usually, they start at 250 Hertz (vibrations per second) and jump by strange intervals up to 8,000 Hertz, which can also be written as 8 kiloHertz (kHz).
The volume (loudness) of the quietest level at which you can hear that sound is recorded on the grid according to the decibel volume on the left side of the graph. Usually, it starts at -10 decibels and increases exponentially by a factor of 10 up to 100 decibels.
Let’s stop and look briefly at what that graph means. Because the graph is made of lines on a grid that make equal-sized blocks, you have the impression that the difference between 0 and 10 decibels is the same as the difference between 10 and 20 decibels and that the difference between 20 and 30 decibels is the same as the difference between 30 and 40 decibels, and so on. No! The difference between 10 and 20 decibels is 10 times the difference between 0 and 10. And the difference between 20 and 30 decibels is 100 times the difference between 10 and 20. And the difference between 30 and 40 decibels is 1000 times the difference between 20 and 30. If you constructed a graph that would reproduce a linear model of those actual differences, using a cell 1 cm square for 1 decibel, you would need a piece of paper the size of North America.
Similarly, the range of frequencies in Hertz across the top of the graph are distributed in very compressed form: 250, 500, 1000, 1500, 2000, [3000 may be skipped], 4000, [5000 may be skipped], 6000, [7000 may be skipped], and 8000. Although many people can hear higher frequencies, especially children, up to and beyond 12,000 Hertz, no one pays any attention to those human attributes. How hearing of lower and higher frequencies affects human behavior has been largely neglected. The amount of uncharted territory on that audiogram is vast. We have a lot to learn but we have some landmarks!
The audiogram as a “map” of hearing is so compressed that it gives the impression that it contains all we need to know about a person’s hearing. What audiologists say about “normal hearing” or “slight hearing loss” has been accepted and assumed to be correct and comprehensive by most people. When you join the points on the graph that record the decibel thresholds tested at each frequency, a line called a “profile” is visible. Audiologists do not concern themselves with that profile unless the hearing threshold is very loud (high decibels) sound that indicates moderate or severe deafness. However, one researcher noticed that the ability to hear a sound at a particular frequency matters IF IT DOES NOT MATCH THE THRESHOLD OF THE OTHER FREQUENCIES OF SOUND HEARD BY THAT EAR. Furthermore, problems arise when each ear does NOT hear sound of a particular frequency AT THE SAME THRESHOLD. Dr. Guy Bérard learned that perfect hearing IS A STRAIGHT LINE ON THE AUDIOGRAM AT ABOUT 10 DECIBELS. Furthermore, a straight line at 20 decibels might be better for your health than a jagged line bouncing between 5 and 15 decibels. When jagged “profiles” occur in both ears and at different frequencies, which he called “bilateral distortions,” the distortions in hearing can take a dreadful toll on the person’s mistaken perception of reality (the sound environment, which includes their own and other people’s voices) and on their mental and physical health.
The audiogram often reveals a profile of peaks and valleys because most people do not hear every frequency at exactly the same decibel level. Furthermore, the peaks represent intense bursts of sound (of those frequencies) shaping how words and sentences are interpreted by the brain. And the valleys represent sound deprivation to the brain. When you factor in the half of the brain — left or right — primarily fed by the right and left ear, respectively, you can see clearly on which side of the brain those gaps in reception of sound-energy occur.
Bérard made important progress. He discovered that particular patterns of peaks and valleys on the audiogram are consistent with mild, moderate, and severe (suicidal ideation) depression. He learned that depression is primarily a left-ear phenomenon, although a depression profile in the right ear will cause milder depression and depression profiles in both ears make the depression more severe. He did not quite connect those profiles with sound-energy losses, although he was coming close to that concept. The audiogram is very important if depression is suspected! Choosing the best type of therapy should be based on what the audiogram reveals about the origins of depression: in the left ear, in the right ear, or in both ears.
Bérard provides certain guidelines for depression analysis. He also noticed that people with dyslexia, “neurosis” (that we now call “bipolar disorder”), and autism all have “bilateral distortions.” In other words, if a person’s left ear and right ear are hearing the same frequencies of sound at different volume thresholds, the brain malfunctions. Bérard did not understand my neurological discovery of right-ear driven left-brain dominance so he did not understand that malfunction. But he did see that a person’s behavior depends profoundly upon how the person hears different frequencies of sound, which is why he called his book Hearing Equals Behavior. I had not read his book before I made my discoveries. Bérard had passed away before I could share my discoveries with him. Alfred Tomatis, with whom Bérard collaborated, made important anatomical discoveries and knew that the right ear was more important than the left ear in some ways. But Tomatis also did not understand left-brain dominance in integrative processes. And he, too, passed away before I made my discoveries.
If people who are going to use Focused Listening™ get an audiogram before they begin and another after about three weeks, depending on what condition they are hoping to correct, they can see changes in their hearing by comparing the two graphs. A professional audiogram is more accurate. If for some reason you cannot get one, you might try to take your own audiogram at this site: https://hearingtest.online or this site https://www.audiocheck.net/testtones_hearingtestaudiogram.php or at this site https://www.soundly.com/hearing-test
If you would like to share your before and after audiograms and answer a questionnaire, this website is collecting data to learn more about how Focused Listening™ changes some of those profiles Bérard identified. If you share your audiograms you will be advancing science and receiving a free download of Awakening Normal by Laurna Tallman. You can email here to start the process. This is a time-limited offer.