The world through a deaf person's ears: Video reveals what it's like to listen to sound using a cochlear implant
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Hearing the sound of birdsong in the mornings and having endless conversations with friends is something most of us take for granted, but approximately one in every 1,000 babies is born deaf and many people lose their hearing as they get older, making everyday life more difficult.
Cochlear implants have revolutionised life for some people who are deaf or hearing impaired and cannot benefit from a hearing aid, by letting them hear again. But until recently, the experts who design and implant the clever devices have not known what they sound like.
Now, scientists have revealed what it sounds like to hear via an implant and tones sound a tad crackly, while voices can appear a little robotic.
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Cochlear implants (pictured) enable some people who are deaf or hearing impaired who cannot benefit from a standard hearing aid, hear again. Now scientists have revealed what the world sounds like through their ears
WHAT IS A COCHLEAR IMPLANT?
The cochlear implant is a surgically placed under the skin behind the ear and includes microphones to pick up sounds and a speech processor to prioritise audible speech externally - splitting the sound into channels and sending the electrical sound signals though a thin cable to the transmitter.
The transmitter is a coil held in position by a magnet placed behind the external ear that transmits power and the processed sound signals across the skin to the internal device by electromagnetic induction.
A receiver and stimulator secured in the bone beneath the skin concerts the signals into electric impulses and sends them though an internal cable to electrodes.
An array of electrodes wound through the cochlea send the impulses to the nerves in the scala tympani and then to the brain through the auditory nerve system.
As of December 2012, approximately 324,000 people worldwide have received cochlear implants.
In the best case scenario, the implants, which convert sound to electric impulses that travel to the brain, allow patients who cannot hear anything at all to achieve 100 per cent speech understanding.
Michael Dorman, an Arizona State University professor of speech and hearing science, made the discovery of what the world sounds like via an implant, when one of his patients who had lost hearing in both ears and had received an implant, regained his natural hearing in one of his ears.
'That allowed us to have him match the sound quality of an implant with his hearing ear,' he said.
'And we'd always wondered, "what does it really sound like?"'
HEARING LOSS IN THE UK
- One in six of the population has some form of hearing loss - 10 million people - according to Action on Hearing Loss.
- More than 800,000 people are severely or profoundly deaf. 45,000 of them are children.
- Around 2million people in the UK have hearing aids and 10,000 have cochlear implants.
'It was a tremendous help to us in understanding cochlear implants.'
The experts first experimented with tones in order to pinpoint what certain frequencies sound like to someone wearing an implant. The video shows that they appear slightly echoey, but nonetheless amazing to someone who has been without the ability to hear either temporarily or since birth.
They then showed what speech sounds like via a cochlear implant and it is clear – if slightly more robotic than natural hearing.
Professor Dorman's team is currently working on a project to test the performance of patients by using a surround sound system that is calibrated so that if someone sits in the middle of the array of speakers, it sounds as if they are in a restaurant.
Busy spaces like restaurants can be a difficult places to distinguish speech for people with hearing difficulties.
'It's really a striking replication of the environment and will help them evaluate new signalling algorithms for the implant,' he said.
Cochlear implants, (pictured) which convert sound to electric impulses that travel to the brain, allow patients who cannot hear anything at all to achieve 100 per cent speech understanding
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