Details on Apple's Cochlear Implant iPhone Accessory

Last month, we told you about Apple's plan to partner with Austrailian company Cochlear to launch the first Made For iPhone Cochlear implant. The device will be able to stream audio from an iOS device directly to a surgically embedded sound processor. Now, Wired magazine has more details on the technology here.

NTID gets $2.6 million Grant

image of Matthew Dye
from ntid.rit.edu

A federal grant of $2.6 million will be used by the National Technical Institute for the Deaf to study the results of cochlear implants. The researcher leading the study, Matthew Dye, says sometimes the results are positive but sometimes "cochlear implant recipients never develop usable speech and oral-language skills." This research is intended to answer the question as to why the outcome varies. It's the first study of its kind to focus on college-age adults, Read more here.

the first Cochlear Implant made for the iPhone

Apple and hearing implant company Cochlear are partnering to first made for iPhone Cochlear implant. The "Made for iPhone" implant will be able stream audio from iPhones and iPads. It includes   controls and monitoring options for parents. ZDnet has details here.

Misleading PR on Implant Surgery

A recent news release about a study on cochlear implant surgical techniques called it a "breakthrough." HealthNewsReview says it wasn't a breakthrough at all. Not only that, there are conflict of interests with device manufacturers. Read more in the respected health news site HealthNewsReview here.

Why People With Brain Implants Are Afraid to Go Through Automatic Doors

“When you get an implant, they warn you about interference with devices like MRI machines. But they don’t warn you about Best Buy or Walmart,” says Gary Olhoeft. An FDA report (which you can read here) written way back in the year 2000 identified the problem of implant-interference from other devices:

The consequence of EMI [or electromagnetic interference] with medical devices may be only a transient ‘blip’ on a monitor, or it could be as serious as preventing an alarm from sounding or inappropriate device movement leading to patient injury or death. With the increasing use of sensitive electronics in devices, and the proliferation of sources of EM energy, there is heightened concern about EMI in many devices.

This problem is 'likely to grow in scope and scale unless we plan carefully," according to a Gizmodo article. Read more about the issue here.

Research Findings on Cochlear Implant electrodes

New research suggests some best practices for cochlear implant surgery. The main finding: Cochlear implants that have electrodes without wires perform better than those with wires because they cause injury inside the inner ear. You can read the details of the study in the online edition of The Laryngoscope here.

Controversial Study claims CI Kids do better without Sign

Ann Geers of the
University of Texas at Dallas

A controversial new study claims children with cochlear implants are better off not learning sign language. The researchers write, "Contrary to earlier published assertions, there was no advantage to parents' use of sign language either before or after CI." The study, lead by Ann Geers of the University of Texas at Dallas, looked at development of 97 children. They found:

Over 70% of children without sign language exposure achieved age-appropriate spoken language compared with only 39% of those exposed for 3 or more years. Children without sign language exposure produced speech that was more intelligible (mean = 70%) than those exposed to sign language (mean = 51%).

An editorial from two professors (Karl White of Utah State University and Louis Cooper of Columbia University) said the research was "well-designed" offering "credible and useful information" that "can help end the passionate but debilitating debates between advocates of signing and nonsigning." Read the full commentary here.

A limitation of the study that sign language advocates are likely to point out: The children in the study were from hearing families who were not native signers. Details of the study are in the journal Pediatrics.

Also of interest: AG Bell gave lead researcher, Ann Geers, its 2014 Volta Award for making "a significant contribution to increasing public awareness of the challenges and potential of people with hearing loss." Geers recieved the award along with colleague Jean Moog. They collaborated as at Central Institute for the Deaf and below is a video of them recieving the award.

Getting to Know.. Cochlear Limited

You could have bought stock in Cochlear Limited at the turn of the century for about $10. This week the stock was worth more than $150 a share-15 times more. Cochlear Limited is the biggest of the three companies that dominate the implant market. Based in Australia, Cochlear does most of its business in Europe and the U.S. through more than a dozen subsidiaries. More than a quarter of a million people have one of its implants. It employs more than 2800 people in 20Getting to Know.. Cochlear Limited  countries.

30 years ago: Implant history

image from Cochlear.com 

On June 4, 1987 Holly McDonell (now Holly Taylor) of Sydney became the first child to receive a commerical multi-channel cochlear implant system (Nucleus made by Cochlear, LTD). The four year old had became profoundly deaf from bacterial meningitis. Holly still has her original implant and had several sounds processor upgrades. The Daily Telegraph takes a look at what's happened in the 30 years since in an article here.

AI comes to Cochlear Implants

The largest cochlear implant maker has inked a deal to use artificial intelligence. Cochlear based in Austrailia, will use the help of AI maker Otoconsult, based in Belgium, to more accurately taylor the settings to each wearer. Cochlear CEO Chris Smith says the software will be accessible worldwide, so audiologists calibrate the device more effectively. Read more in Business Inisder here.

" I see his voice. I hear his face."

image from ondeafness.com

The hearing mother of a deaf child has written a piece for the New York Times titled, "My Deaf Son Fought Speech. Sign Language Let Him Bloom." The writer, Elizabeth Engelman, works at the Family Center on Deafness in Largo, Florida and writes the blog OnDeafness. She says":

"In American Sign Language, the sign for cochlear implant is similar to the sign for vampire. Vampire is signed with two fingers like teeth to the throat. Cochlear implant is signed with two fingers like teeth behind the ears. The audiologist told me not to sign at all. She said sign language was a crutch that would hinder his speech.. The audiologist adjusted the pitch and tuned the levels to make a simulation of sound. She called this process mapping, but there were no guideposts to show the way. How do you chart loneliness? How do you trace a landscape of silence and sound between mother and son?"

Read the full story in the New York Times here.

How children with Implants learn words

Researchers at The Ohio State University are trying to determine whether children with cochlear implants learn words differently than their peers. One of their findings: "Whether or not a child learns a word can depend on when a parent says a label and what the child is doing when that label is said." Read more about the effort in US News.

What's happened to NZ's youngest implant receptient?

Josh Foreman was New Zealand's youngest person to have cochlear implant surgery when he was two years old. Now, he's 25 and graduating from the University of Auckland. The New Zealand Herald has a video report (no captions but there is text here.

Father and Son get Implants

A Georgia father and his son got cochlear implants together-despite the fact the father was at first against his son getting an implant. Atlanta's Fox 5 was there when Randy Adams had his implant activated.

What Do Cochlear Implants And Hearing Aids Sound Like?

Science Friday has posted a lesson for middle schools students about how hearing aids and cochlear implants including sample recordings of..

"what it’s like to hear sound through a hearing aid and a cochlear implant. Unless you wear one of these devices, it is impossible to know exactly what it is like to experience sound through them. In fact, people who have normal hearing in one ear but wear a cochlear implant in the other ear say that these simulations sound very different from how they hear sounds with their implant."

The sample sounds are posted here.

Bot helps perform Cochlear-Implant Surgery

Robots "have successfully performed a tricky, delicate operation that helped implant a hearing device into a deaf woman's ear," reports Live Science. Researchers at the University of Bern in Switzerland said, ""When discussing much-needed surgical innovations for use in ear, nose and throat procedures, our surgeon colleagues would repeatedly mention that gaining access to the inner ear in a minimally invasive manner was a major hurdle that had not been resolved. This spurred us on." Here is a video with more, but there are no captions, but you can read more here.