According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, over 200, 000 people already use cochlear implants world-wide.
Cochlear implants can deliver sound collected from an external microphone directly to the auditory nerve and into the brain.
Some electronic circuits have also made their way into the bodies of people in the form of heart pacemakers and cochlear implants.
Meanwhile, Pierrick Legrand of the University of Bordeaux has used the method to optimise cochlear implants, which help people to hear better.
Merzenich built on that work to develop, with colleagues from UCSF, one of the first practical cochlear implants for the hearing-impaired, in the late 1980s.
Della Santina has built a vestibular prosthesis that he hopes can someday be implanted in humans much like cochlear implants are now used to restore hearing.
With promising results Biotectix moved into its own labs and landed its first commercial contract (with the Australian medical device maker Cochlear) to incorporate its invention in cochlear implants.
Within the community of the Deaf, someone who gets cochlear implants and joins the ranks of the hearing may feel like a Jew for Jesus at a Satmar Talmud class.
The measurements, translated to electrical impulses, would be delivered to the three vestibular nerves that emanate from the three semicircular canals, much like audio signals are delivered to the auditory nerve in cochlear implants.
Scientists have said that designing a bionic eye has been much more difficult than developing aids like cochlear implants for hearing, in part because visual information is two-dimensional, and because of the anatomy of the eye.
Shares of hearing implants maker Cochlear surged 16% in strong volume after the company said it had identified the cause for the failure of its top-selling device.
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