Behind-the-Ear Implant Can Help the Deaf to Hear

Stanford University researchers are experimenting with a quarter-sized device of metal and plastic that can be implanted behind the ear and can help the deaf hear.

“Now it’s like heart transplants--everybody’s doing it,” said Professor Robert White, chairman of Stanford’s electrical engineering department about the half a dozen ear implants available in the United States and abroad.

After 13 years of university work on electronic ear implants, he said, three people are helping test the latest product.

One, a profoundly deaf 68-year-old Vallejo grandmother, can hear sounds and distinguish voices for the first time in her life.

“She went to a family reunion recently and said it was the first time she could understand what was going on. She swears by it,” White said.

On the other hand, a 38-year-old woman with three children and two dogs frequently turns the device off because it creates too much noise, he said.

Part of the problem is that researchers have tested their device with just one electronic channel, which can produce a “noisy, buzzy, sometimes screechy tone,” according to White.

He thinks an eight-channel system could be developed that would provide better sound discrimination and allow the profoundly deaf to understand speech.

“You hear with the brain, not with the ear, so we have to figure out what the brain wants,” White said.

Grants from the National Institutes of Health support the Stanford research, which is aimed at devising an implant that can bypass the ear and plug directly into nerves.

About 250,000 people suffer hearing loss because of trauma, genetic defects or disease that damage sensitive hair cells in the inner-ear nerves. The damage prevents the ear from converting mechanical energy into a set of electrical impulses for auditory nerves in the brain. The ear has approximately 30,000 of the microscopic nerve fibers.