Improvements in the Quality of Life of the Hearing Impaired: Modern Technology Impact

     A cochlear implant is an electronic device that restores hearing for people anywhere from hard of hearing to the profoundly deaf. The cochlear implant is surgically implanted under the skin behind the ear. The surgeon puts the electrode array inside the inner ear and than inside the cochlea. The implant works by a device outside the ear, which rests on the skin behind the ear. It is held upright by a magnet and is also connected by a lead to a sound professor.

Cochlear Implants are an object that is very controversial in the deaf community. “A Cochlear Implants is a device that provdes direct electrical stimulation to the auditory (hearing) nerve in the inner ear.” (“Cochlear Implants”) Cochlear Implants bypass the damaged hair cells, and directly stimulate the auditory nerve. Depending on when the Cochlear Implant is implanted it allows people to hear sounds, and sometimes even their own voice. While it does not cure hearing loss or deafness, it does allow people to hear. On more technical terms a Cochlear Implant includes parts like a microphone, speech processor, and a transmitter which each play a different part in the Cochlear Implant. The microphone picks up sounds, sends them to the speech processer, and then the speech processor analyzes and digitized the sound signal, thus sending them to a transmitter worn on the head. The debate of whether or not Cochlear Implants are right in the deaf community is one that has been going on for years. People believe having Cochlear Implants are a good thing, because they allow deaf people to communicate with hearing people, it allows people who are not helped by conventional hearing aids to be helped, and it creates new possibilities for deaf people. However there are also people that argue that having a Cochlear Implant is a bad thing, because it proposes the idea that deaf people need to be fixed, it can give deaf people false hope, and it proposes the idea that deaf people have a

To start with, cochlear implants won’t change the person’s identity because it’s a helpful device in which won’t change the individual’s physical aspects. According to the movie Sound and Fury documentary, the child Peter was given a cochlear implant after a few months of birth. Peter’s surgery was a success in which he continued being who he is even after given an implant. The implant can be easily put back on the child and even removed in which he would be back to normal. Another reason why the cochlear implant won’t change the person’s identity because it is meant for someone deaf to actually hear. According to Source A, its states that “ Some commentators attacked the medical profession's role in the creation of such negative images of

Most doctors recommend that children with cochlear implant only use spoken language as a method of communication so they can maximize the benefits from the cochlear implant. However, the popular method of communication for children with cochlear implants is total communication which is the integration of oral communication and ASL. Although Heather Artinian was fluent in ASL before she received her cochlear implant, she was able to communicate with hearing and deaf people through both ASL and spoken language after years of intensive speech therapy (Aronson, Sound and Fury: Six Years Later). When cochlear implant users take it off, they cannot hear any sounds so they are technically still deaf. Even though they are able to hear sounds, cochlear implant recipients will not be able to identify themselves as hearing individuals. When they bridge the gap between the deaf and hearing world, they can still be a part of both cultures without defining themselves as a part of only one culture (TedX: The Heather World). Therefore, the cochlear implant can be a great device for deaf people who want to stay in the Deaf community but still be able to take advantage of additional opportunities in the hearing

A cochlear implant is an implanted medical device for the deaf or hard of hearing that do not benefit from the traditional hearing aid. It is composed of an internal device that is implanted in the recipient’s head and an external device that is the sound processor. The sound processor collects sound and then transmits it to the implanted device, which then sends it directly to the brain to be interpreted as language. During the time that I was choosing a hearing solution for my daughter I experienced a lot of negative opinions from the deaf culture (community of deaf people who share sign language among other things). They seem to be against parents choosing to have their small children implanted. The deaf culture presumes

Cochlear implants are commonly used in modern science to treat patients with deafness in one or both ears. The structure of cochlear implants are as follows, an outer component, a transmitter, a receiver-stimulator package and the microelectrode array(Sigfrid D. Soli, 2011). The outer component of a cochlear implant records sound waves, while the transmitter brings the recorded sounds to the receiver-stimulator. The receiver-stimulator then converts the recorded sound waves to electrical impulses, and brings them to the electrode array, which then stimulates the auditory nerve and provides artificial hearing(Tan, Walshe, Viani, & Al-Rubeai, 2013).

Or even a deaf person that is able to hear voices, pick out music notes with hearing aids. They usually will recommend cochlear implants for the profoundly death. However from the HLAA (Hearing Loss Association of America) discussed that “About one-fourth of the overall range of outcome can be explained based on the length of deafness and about one-sixth of depends on the word understanding capabilities prior to implantation. Other patient, ear and device variables demonstrated no significant correlations with the benefit achieved with respect to speech recognition.” Meaning cochlear implants are still an unperfected machinery to help all deaf humans.

There are many things that people in the hearing world take for granted every day, such as verbal communication, using a telephone or something as simple as the feeling you get when your favorite song comes on the radio. To a person that has been completely immersed in the deaf community, it may be easy to view the sense of sound as unnecessary. As a member of the haring community it would seem nearly impossible to live a day without sound. Cochlear implants are devices that help a person who is deaf gain hearing to some degree, and in some cases nearly full hearing. This new technology has become very controversial throughout both the hearing, and the deaf world.

Deafness or hard of hearing, is defined by the medical society as a disability, but those who are diagnosed with the disability think otherwise. They think of themselves as a community, embrace it as an identity, or a culture with their own language, sign language, and they believe their community is being threaten. They label themselves as a minority endangered of being wiped out because of one leading cause, cochlear implants. Those serious about their ideals of their community see cochlear implants as a threat, because cochlear implants are considered as cure. Countless number of controversies over cochlear implants have been brought up, but the Deaf community should see cochlear implants as gift for patients rather than an extreme threat.

Passages A & B have different views on what would work best for the Deaf people, but they both want want a positive outcome for the Deaf community. Passage A mainly talks about how the cochlear implants do not benefit deaf people and how the permanent effects from it can be a disadvantage for the implant patient in the deaf community. “Implanted children would "end up trapped between two worlds: they can't live the way hearing people can, and yet they won't have grown up in the deaf community, using ASL" (Zimmer 85)”. The author helps the reader understand the Deaf community rather then understand the medical view of cochlear implants.

So what is a cochlear implant? According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, “A cochlear implant is a small, complex electronic device that can help to provide a sense of sound to a person who is profoundly deaf or severely hard-of-hearing. The implant consists of an external portion that sits behind the ear and a second portion that is surgically placed under the skin” (NIDCD). Cochlear implants do not restore a person’s hearing and work differently from a hearing aid. The implants, “bypass damaged portions of the ear and directly stimulate the auditory nerve. Signals generated by the implant are sent by way of the auditory nerve to the brain, which recognizes the signals as sound”

When most people hear the term cochlear implant they tend to think about hard of hearing people but they also tend to get cochlear implant and hearing aid mixed up. A cochlear implant is a surgically implanted electronic device that provides a sense of sound to a person who is profoundly deaf or severely hard of hearing in both ears. The cochlear implant has been available to people for over 30 years. The man that came of with the idea to make this invention goes by the name of William. F House. William he was a medical researcher and was born in Kansas City,MO december 1 1923 and died december 7 Aurora,OR he lived for 89 years. The first implant was made in 1978 it was referred to as the bionic ear. Since that time a variety of cochlear implants have

Cochlear implants are biomedical devices that help individuals with severe hearing impairments with auditory sensation. In order to process sound cochlear implants include external and internal components. A microphone, which is part of the external component gathers sound (Petersona, Pisonia, & Miyamoto, 2010). These sound waves from the environment are transferred into electrical signals (Petersen, Gjedde, Wallentin, & Vuust, 2013). The electrical signals are then organized through a series of filters. After this step is completed, the signals are conveyed across the skin to a receiver within the internal components. In the implanted device, further conversion occurs and the signals are delivered to an array of electrodes within the cochlea. Each signal is directed to a specific electrode, this method utilizes tonotopic representation and coding of frequency. Lastly, the electrodes stimulate the auditory nerve (Petersona et al., 2010). These are the main processes involved in the application of cochlear implants. This paper explores some of the current research related to the application of cochlear implants including: language abilities, plasticity and areas for further research.

Sounds and speech are captured by a microphone and sent to the external speech processor. The processor then translates the sounds into electrical signals, which are then sent to the transmitting coil. These codes travel up a cable to the headpiece and are transmitted across the skin through radio waves to the implanted cochlea electrodes. The electrodes’ signals then stimulate the auditory nerve fibres to send information to the brain where it is interpreted as meaningful sound.

The purpose of the cochlear implant is to bypass the damaged hair cells in a patient’s cochlea and help establish sounds. The product uses a microphone which is situated on the exterior of the ear. The microphone and electricity