February 2005 - Dr. Robert V.
Shannon of the House Ear Institute discusses the factors affecting
speech recognition for CI users. This is a VERY interesting article!
September 2005 - We've long been told that a person
having a CI should have the better ear implanted. It turns out that may
not be correct!
January 2006 - Want to show your hearing friends how the sound of a
cochlear implant (CI) changes as the number of channels increases? This
CI simulator from the PBS website does exactly that. Here
it is!
January 2006 - CI Technology Timeline
February 2006 - New
CI Electrode Array Technology Promises Improved Hearing
March 2006 - New
Cochlear Implant Promises Improved Performance
April 2006 - Professor
developing PDA-CI Interface
June 2006 - UI Cochlear Implant Center
Contributes to CI Advances
January 2007 - NIDCD-funded Research Explores
Use of Laser to Stimulate Auditory Nerve
January 2007 - An
MP3 player for the deaf
August 2007 -
Light-Based CI Might Outperform Today's Technology
September 2007 - Cochlear Implant Work at UW
October 2007 - Aculight developing optical
cochlear implant
December 2007 - Rutgers Discovery Offer
Potential for Improved Cochlear Implants
March 2008 -
Doctor Maps CI from Halfway Around the World
March 2008 -
Should you consider upgrading the INTERNAL
CI components?
March 2008 - Researcher Aims to Improve CI
Performance in Noise
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
July 2000
One of the questions often asked of people who use hearing aids or
cochlear implants is what things sound like using those devices. I'm not
really sure I believe that people who don't use them can really know how
they sound, but there are demonstrations available of how scientists
think they sound.
One such demonstration of the sound quality of cochlear implants is
available at: www.utdallas.edu/~loizou/cimplants/. This site provides
demonstrations of how implants might sound with different numbers of
channels. It also demonstrates how the depth of electrode insertion
influences the sound quality. Very interesting for those of you with
usable hearing, or for your hearing friends and family to get some idea
of the sound quality a cochlear implant can provide.
BTW, there's lots of other good information at this site. While
you're there, take a minute and poke around.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
October 2003
Editor: Ever heard of MEMS? Well, neither had I, until I saw an
article in Fortune talking about potential future applications of this
technology. "MEMS" is the abbreviation for
Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems, and it's creating quite a stir within
the experimental medical community. One of the potential applications is
a second-generation cochlear implant. Here are a couple of excerpts from
the Fortune article. For the full article, please point your browser to:
http://www.forbes.com/asap/2001/0402/052a.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Deafness is a treatable situation," proclaims Kensall
"Ken" Wise, professor of electrical engineering and computer
science at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. "In the next 20
years, most deafness will disappear." With funding from the
National Institutes of Health (NIH), Wise is developing a
second-generation cochlear implant based on MEMS that he expects to be
commercialized in about five years.
The first MEMS neural implant to reach the market will likely be for
deafness. At the University of Michigan, Wise's device uses a MEMS
electrode to interface with neurons responsible for translating auditory
signals. The array is threaded into the inner ear of a deaf person,
where it relays "sound" to the brain. Currently, non-MEMS
devices have been implanted in about 30,000 people, but Wise expects
MEMS to improve hearing sensitivity, enabling someone to pick out speech
in a crowded room or hear a much more natural version of music.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
January 2006
Here's
a timeline of inventions and discoveries on the road to today's cochlear
implants. The timeline begins in 1800, and continues through 2004.
Full
Story
March 2006
A group of
University scientists recently developed a new hearing aid device which
will allow users to hear a higher-quality sound than existing technology
permits. The device is called a cochlear implant - a type of hearing aid
implanted in a spiraled, snail-like structure in the ear called the
cochlea. Full
Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
August 2007
About 100,000 profoundly deaf people now hear with
cochlear implants, which work by stimulating the auditory nerve with a
string of electrodes implanted in the inner ear. While the devices enable
many users to converse easily and use telephones, they still fall short of
restoring normal hearing. Now scientists at Northwestern University are
exploring whether laser-based implants could one day outperform today's
electrical version. The mammalian ear uses neural firing rates as one way of
encoding sound. As part of a project funded by the National Institute for
Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), Claus-Peter Richter and
his colleagues at Northwestern have demonstrated that they can control
firing rates in the auditory nerve of animals using infrared laser
radiation. They are now trying to establish that it's safe to use for long
periods of time and that it can manipulate neural firing rates with enough
precision to send useful information to the brain.
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
March 2008
Through the power of Internet technology, medical
experts in New York have switched on an inner-ear device, allowing a man in
Uganda to hear for the first time in two years. Activating the device from
halfway around the world is a first, and highlights a trailblazing way in
which the growing realm of telemedicine - conducting medical procedures from
remote locations - can enhance the lives of people in struggling nations.
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
March 2008
YOU could call it the upgrader's dilemma. When it
comes to buying a new mobile phone, computer or DVD player, should you buy
the latest and greatest model now, since it offers new features that your
old model lacks? Or should you wait for the next version of the technology
that will be along next year and threatens to make today's gear seem
suddenly old-fashioned? Now imagine that upgrading the item in question
requires you to have surgery. That, in a nutshell, is the predicament that
people with cochlear implants may soon be in. As many as 120,000 people are
now thought to have had their hearing restored by these revolutionary
devices, which turn sound waves into electrical signals that stimulate the
auditory nerves in the ear via an implanted electrode, and are perceived as
sound. But several new developments promise big improvements to the
technology in the coming years, so existing users could face tough choices
as they have to decide whether to undergo surgery to reap the benefits.
Full Story
