Bone Anchored Cochlear Stimulator

Dr. Sam Marzo of Loyola University Medical Center surgically implanted a bone-anchored cochlear stimulator that delivers sound to the inner ear by bone conduction.

"People unable to hear as a result of chronic ear inflammation or drainage can benefit from this new therapy," said Marzo, who also serves as program director of the Hearing and Balance Center at Loyola's Oakbrook Terrace Medical Center, One South Summit Ave, Oakbrook Terrace, Ill. "The device will work for people who do not have a functioning ear canal."

Michael Chorost on Laser Based Implants

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"As part of a project funded by the National Institute for Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), Claus-Peter Richter and his colleagues at Northwestern have demonstrated that they can control firing rates in the auditory nerve of animals using infrared laser radiation."

Docuweek Question and Answer with Irene Brodsky

Docuweek Question and Answer with Irene Taylor Brodsky, director of Hear and Now.

Q: What inspired you to make Hear and Now?

ITB: After being deaf for 65 years, my parents always told me they "didn't have time to learn to hear." So, it never occurred to me that they would actually try out cochlear implants. When they told me--20 years after the device was first invented--that they wanted to give sound a go, I knew it would be an epic experiment. I made the film to figure out their intentions as much as to document them.

Iowa Study on Localization Ability in Adult Bilateral Cochlear Implant Users

A University of Iowa study concludes that sequential bilateral implants can be beneficial even after many years of monaural use and even with very different cochlear implants. Speech perception and localization with adults with bilateral sequential cochlear implants.

Auditory Stem Implant for a New Zealand Child

Jorja Steele became the first child to receive an auditory stem implant in Australia, after cochlear implants provided no benefit. She is from New Zealand.

Neurosurgeons from three Melbourne hospitals, aided by a team of audiologists, implanted the device - a three-by-six-millimetres pad of electrodes that stimulates hearing pathways in the brain - during a four-hour operation.

Nucleus 22 and 24 Users Needed for Study

Brian Kelly, a graduate of Syracuse University in biomedical engineering, and a bilateral cochlear implant user is seeking subjects for his research project.

He's looking for adult research subjects who have had cochlear implants for at least six months and are using a Nucleus-22 or Nucleus-24 device. Subjects will participate in various experiments that study sound perception "in order to help us better understand how implants interact with the brain to encode sound, and how to improve implant functioning,"

Cochlear Corporation Labor Dispute

Cochlear Corporation is involved in a labor dispute with the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union at its Sydney manufacturing facility.