Re: Will it ever be possible to give a congenitally-deaf individual the ability to hear?

On Mon, 24 Sep 2007 12:20:55 GMT, NoSpam@xxxxxxxxxxx (Bob Masta)
wrote:

On Sun, 23 Sep 2007 08:58:44 -0700, "Green Xenon [Radium]"
<glucegen1@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Sep 13, 11:22 am, jay1000 <jfschonSpamgu...@xxxxxxx> wrote
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.hearing-loss/msg/914ce5039cd5a23d
:

This is probably a normal phenomena, even for hearing people. I use a
pillow speaker to help with insomnia by playing music at a loudness
just above the threshhold of hearing. Old favorites are easily
recognizable while new music is just gibberish. I think that it is
something in the brain - not the ears.

Nice to see an interesting year-old thread re-opened. I would be nice to
design an electronic auditory system that is an electronic-equivalent of
the parts of the human brain involved in auditory perception. This
device needs to know exactly how the brain works in terms of auditory
perception. This equipment should be able to generate the intended audio
perception within the brain itself even in an individual who was
totally-deaf from the point of conception onwards due to a congenital
absence of peripheral auditory nerves. Such a device would
electronically generate sound perception -- within the brain itself --
in a similar manner in which auditory hallucinations and audio
perceptions in dreams occur.

There are a number of research projects which involve stimulating
at higher brain centers than does the coclear prosthesis approach.
The idea is that whatever pre-processing was done at lower levels
would be done by electronics before applying the results to the
higher centers.

The general problem with this approach has to do with the fact that
as you move toward higher centers, there are more and more
cross-connections with other areas. So most people are working
on intermediate centers, where the signal has been only partly
analyzed by lower centers.

Also, consider that there will likely never be a device that is
installed in a congenitally-deaf person that suddenly gives full
normal hearing, He will need to learn to hear, just as we all did,
and make associations with other parts of the brain. "Mother's voice"
and "toilet flushing" are easily distinguishable, but they are likely
not distinguished in the same brain regions, and futhermore the
"mother's voice" distinction will be quite different for each person.

Best regards,


Bob Masta

D A Q A R T A
Data AcQuisition And Real-Time Analysis
www.daqarta.com
Scope, Spectrum, Spectrogram, Signal Generator
Science with your sound card!
I think I read that hearing that comes later in life is nowhere near
as useful or intelligible as hearing from birth. Sight suffers in a
similar way. A few adults have had sight for the first time only as
adults. There are rare conditions that can be corrected surgically.
But even though they can see clear images in color their brains are
unable to process these images correctly. For example facial
recognition can be difficult or impossible. So faces either cannot be
recognised as faces or if recognised as a face cannot be
differentiated from other faces.
ERS
.

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