Maico Audiological ServicesCochlear implants are beginning to gain a significant amount of traction in the world of hearing health. Even though hearing aids and certain surgeries have been seen as more successful and less risky, electric cochlear implants have the ability to create hearing in people who had previously given up hope. These implants require many different parts of the gadget to function in concert with one another, and that has led to some significant misunderstandings about their abilities. For this reason, we will examine the apparatus so to show a more complete picture of the device.
Benefits Of The Electric Cochlear Implants
While surgeries and hearing aids attempt to fix the hearing structures in the body, cochlear implants actually are able to circumvent these problem areas and affect the brain directly. When they are implanted successfully, the user is able to hear sounds even if they do not have any hearing in their ears at all. Using lip reading techniques and telecoils, these users can even watch television and speak on the phone with great success. These are just a few of the ways that cochlear implants are improving the overall hearing health around the world.
What Makes An Implant?
The cochlear implants are composed of many different parts that have a specialized function when it comes to producing the sounds that are sought by the users. The first part of the hearing device is the microphone, which is linked with other components on the outside of the body, like the speech processor unit and the transmitter. These devices need to work with the parts of the electric cochlear implant that are actually placed beneath the skin, the receiver and the electrode bundle. When used together, these individual units can stimulate the brain to think that it is actually hearing sound.
How Do They Work?
The first part of the cochlear implant hearing process is having sound be picked up by the microphone apparatus. This sound is then send to the speech processing unit where the sound is parsed for important noises and then background sounds that can be filtered out. After this process is complete, the sounds go to the transmitter device that is located behind the user’s ear. This part takes the sound and broadcasts it through the user’s head to the receiver that is planted beneath the skin in of the patient. The receiver then takes the sound information and sends it down to the electrode bundle that is physically linked to the auditory nerve. Once the electrode bundle gets this sound, it uses electricity to make the nerves believe that the sound is coming in as an electrical impulse from the ears, allowing the listener to “hear” sound directly in their head. This complex process takes place in just a few seconds, with little to no delay between the initial sound and the sound being picked up in the brain.