Cochlear Life
Posted on January 13th, 2006
Wired had a great article on the search for Bolero through the ears of a cochlear implant user who used to be able to hear. PBS has a neat Scientific American Frontiers interactive that lets hearing people listen to what the world might ’sound’ like to someone with a cochlear implant. It’s amazing to hear the difference in quality from 4 channel to 22 channel. Of course, to a person who has never heard before, this weird garble might be all they’ve ever known, so while it may sound foreign and robotic to us, it is all they can understand. Though once they go through the first year of ‘tuning’ the device, I’m sure they start to detect and figure out the nuances in the changes each time the programming is modifyed by the audiologist. Perhaps my resident cochlear implant expert can chime in with her thoughts!
“When the device was turned on a month after surgery, the first sentence I heard sounded like ‘Zzzzzz szz szvizzz ur brfzzzzzz?’ My brain gradually learned how to interpret the alien signal. Before long, ‘Zzzzzz szz szvizzz ur brfzzzzzz?’ became ‘What did you have for breakfast?’”- from Wired
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1. Resident Cochlear Expert | January 13th, 2006 at 7:46 pm
Yes, the first mapping I had I had no idea what everyone was talking about, yet alone i tried hard to make sense of things.. then eventually over time, the brain began to interpret it, in a different way. I expect it feels a little like wearing a hearing aid again since I’m doing that now. I don’t remember how I learned to hear with the aids, but I know mom and dad were a good help in making the process easier. =)
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