Tapping the Auditory Nerve

Cochlear Implants are one of the oldest types of sensory neural prosthetics in existence. They are designed to replicate, as best as is possible, the sense of sound. They transmit to the brain, a series of patterned electrical impulses which the brain is able to learn to recognise and process as sounds, making out words and syllables from a silent world.

Unfortunately, a side effect of perforating the Cochlear, is all residual natural hearing ability in that ear is usually lost, leaving the electrode array as the only means of viable hearing.

We finally understand enough about the way sound signals are processed into electrical signals, to go one better than the cochlea implant. We can tap directly into the auditory nerve itself. John Middlebrooks of the University of Michigan, US with Russell Snyder of the University of California, San Francisco also US, tested on cats, a prototype direct aural nerve connection.


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