Presbycusis also commonly spelled presbyacusis is a common degenerative condition that affects most of the adult human population. People who are affected by presbycusis usually start losing the ability to hear higher frequency noises ( > 17khz ) around the age of 18 and will progressivly deteriorate throughout their later years in life. The association between advanced age and high-tone deafness was first described by the Dutch scientist Zwaardemaker in 1899.

The condition affects most adults and it is considered a natural side effect of aging, almost everyone will be affected by it at some point in their life. The exact cause of the sensorineural hearing impairment in individuals is unknown, but there are several suspected multifactorial reasons for it.

Possible Causes of Presbycusis:

• Arteriosclerosis: Arteriosclerosis may cause reduced perfusion and oxygenation of the cochlea. Hypoperfusion leads to the creation of reactive oxygen metabolites and free radicals, which may damage inner ear structures directly as well as destroy or damage mitochondrial DNA of the inner ear. This damage may result in the development of presbycusis.

 

• Diet and metabolism: Diabetes speeds the process of atherosclerosis, which might interfere with perfusion and oxygenation of the cochlea. Diabetes causes diffuse proliferation and hypertrophy of the vascular intimal endothelium, which may also interfere with perfusion of the cochlea. Increased intake of a fatty diet may also accelerate atherosclerotic changes in old age as well.

 

• Accumulated exposure to noise: Continuing Exposure to loud noises stresses the already hypoxic cochlea, speeding up the presbycusis process.

 

• Drug and environmental chemical exposure: Scientists presume smoking will accentuate atherosclerotic changes in blood vessels and therefore cause presbycusis to occur. Ingestion of ototoxic drugs (drugs that can be dangerous to the ear and or hearing process.) like aspirin may quicken the presbycusis process

 

• Stress

 

• Genetics: Genetic programming for early aging of parts of the auditory system may influence the development of presbycusis. Often, concomitant impairment of hearing, balance, sense of smell, taste, and visual acuity is associated with the aging process. Likewise, genetically programmed susceptibility to environmental factors (eg, noise, ototoxic drugs and chemicals, stress) may be involved.

Presbycusis and the Mosquito Ringtone:
As a result of people losing the ability to hear high pitch frequencies in middle and later stages of life; teenagers quickly discovered that they could use the ability of their youthful ears to their advantage by being able to hear notifications (text messages, incoming calls, etc… ) from their cell phones without adults being able to hear it. The mosquito ringtone allows teenagers to be notified of text messages and incoming calls when cell phone use is inappropriate (i.e. classroom, church, movie theater, etc…).

Presbycusis Diagnosis:
A quick method to determine if one is affected by presbycusis is to listen to our Teen Buzz / Mosquito Ringtones which are popular with teenagers because for the most part they have not yet developed presbycusis and can hear high frequency noises. The mosquito ringtone test should NOT be used as a substitute for medical advice from your doctor, if you have concerns you should speak with a Otologist.

Since it’s almost April Fool’s Day, I thought I would share some something with everyone. One interesting thing we’ve noticed with the ultrasonic ringtones is the fact that when played, it can be hard to pin point the exact location of the source.

We wish all you tricksters out there good luck on your day of mischieviousness, you could really pull off some annoying pranks with the Mosquito Ringtones! ….Noise? ….. What Noise……

Comment below with your ideas for a good April Fool’s Day prank using Teen Buzz, the mosquito ringtone!

In April of 2007, KFC Featured the Mosquito Ringtone in a type of viral interactive commercial. They were giving away (1000) $10 gift cards to the first thousand people that could correctly state at what point in the commercial the ultra sonic sound was played. I don’t know if it is part of the YouTube conversion process, but it’s pretty obvious where the sound is played.

See the original KFC press release

We’ve come up with a really easy way to get the Mosquito Ringtones on your iPhone for free…. All you have to do is add our Teen Buzz ringtones podcast feed to iTunes. It so shocking easy, I am surprised that people haven’t started podcast ringtone webstes yet. First you need to have iTunes on your computer and click our Teen Buzz / Mosquito Ringtones podcast feed in order to get the ring tones into iTunes.

After clicking the link, a feed will appear in your podcast folder in iTunes.

Click on the arrow next to the Podcast to display all of the ringtones.

Click the frequency of the ultra sonic ring tone that you want to put on your iPhone, or select them all!

And finally, your ringtones should appear in your ringtones folder. If a ringtones folder does not appear, connect your iPhone to your computer

Your ringtones will be available on your iPhone the next time you sync it with iTunes.

After dismantling an iPhone to remove the speaker and test it out, I found out that it works great and plays all the tones properly when connected directly to the PC’s speaker out port, the limitation I talked about earlier must exist within the iPhone software right? Wrong….sorta, it turns out that there was defiantly something going on with my iPhone when I tried to play any tone higher than 14khz from the official source of the Teen Buzz mosquito ringtone website. I just had to figure out what the problem was, the tones listed were all created with an audio utility program called Audacity, so I downloaded the program to see if there were any additional settings I might have missed but it appears I didn’t miss any. I searched and found tone generation software called NCH Tone Generator and I proceeded to create another set of mosquito ringtones to see if these would work on my iPhone. They worked great!

I am not sure if it something to do with the encoding built into Audacity or with the software on the iPhone itself. Either way, they are working now on the iPhone through the Safari browser and through the media player.