At first glance, this story looks like a practical joke. But it’s been reported in the Telegraph, so there must be something in it.
It seems the next breakthrough in enabling deaf people to hear may involve not our ears, but our tongues. Read on…
Extract:
Cochlear implants have had great success in restoring hearing to deaf patients, but the surgery is invasive, expensive and not everyone is a suitable candidate.
Now a team from Colorado State University are working on a device which will allow deaf people to ‘hear’ simply by touching their tongue against a small Bluetooth-enabled device.
“It’s much simpler than undergoing surgery and we think it will be a lot less expensive than cochlear implants,” said John Williams, associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering.
“What we are trying to do is another form of sensory substitution.
“Cochlear implants are very effective and have transformed many lives, but not everyone is a candidate. We think our device will be just as effective but will work for many more people and cost less.”
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David Jackson
January 20, 2015
The next thing we hear something similar is both eyes having in-built Bluetooth devices. Need both so we can hear sounds from either side just like our ears! If you want to hear what is being said, you need to blink both eyes several times. But that could be misunderstood and seen as a lure for something more!
donaldo of the wasatch
January 20, 2015
The tongue is the only muscle in the human body, that I am aware of, that is not attached on both ends. Hence the demon is loose. This would make it twice the demon that it is. Didn’t Helen Keller do something like this by just holding her fingers on people’s faces and throats and the surface of objects? I know that was before my times, but I was 12-16 years of age when she died and saw some of those video based media.
Sorry but this really sounds like a bad concept. Besides my hearing aids and my Cochlear Implants eventually have been awesome and my auditory successes terrific. So I guess I am not a candidate for this perfidy.
Hartmut
January 20, 2015
In the 60’s, there was an attempt to use the dental nerves to receive and transmit auditory signals to the brains. Nothing comes of it, because nothing in the dentures has the capacity of the cochlea and the number of nerves that transmit thousands of frequencies to the brains. The same goes for the tongue nerves. Processing and perception in the brains from the tongue can be unsuitable for human speech and music.