Neurotone has introduced the third generation of its groundbreaking LACE product, a personal computer learning program that helps people with hearing loss dramatically improve their listening and comprehension skills. LACE (for Listening And Communication Enhancement) was conceived by audiologists at the University of California at San Francisco and developed into a product for consumers by Neurotone. The new version, based on two years of customer feedback, includes video playback, videos with captions, standardized testing with improved result graphing, an enhanced training schedule and a ‘replay’ button. The improvements are designed to motivate users to keep progressing through the early stages and ultimately succeed in getting through all twenty sessions of the program. The new version comes after early impressive documented results, with one major study indicating that hearing-aid buyers who used LACE in the first 60 days after their purchase were up to 75 percent less likely to return their hearing aids for credit than those who didn’t.
Neurotone claims LACE can help people who live with some degree of hearing loss increase their listening and communication skills by 40 percent. Just as physical therapy can help rebuild muscles and adjust movements to compensate for physical weakness or injury, LACE can develop skills and strategies that compensate for situations when hearing is inadequate. I haven’t tried the program yet but intend to. Based on the gradual but dramatic improvement I’ve experienced in my own comprehension skills over a five-year period, I know it’s possible for the brain to rewire itself and for the individual to learn new ways of “hearing” to vastly improve comprehension of speech in noise and other listening environments. LACE is designed to compress years of learning into days and weeks — something I’m a believer in based on past experience with computer-assisted training programs.