Cochlear implants boosted by gene therapy plus tiny LEDs
By Clare Wilson,
New Scientist
| 07. 07. 2016
Can light restore hearing in deaf people? Researchers hope that through optogenetics, they can use micro-LED lights to make better cochlear implants than those used by deaf people today.
Standard cochlear implants function by stimulating nerves using an electrode placed inside the cochlea, a tiny spiral cavity inside the ear. These work, but sounds are distorted and muffled.
That’s because people who aren’t deaf can normally discriminate between about 2000 different sound frequencies, whereas cochlear implants allow only about a dozen to be distinguished. As a result, these implants make human speech sound a bit like that of a dalek, and music can be unpleasant.
Continue reading on New Scientist
Image via Flickr/Jessica Merz
Related Articles
What We Inherit by Sam Trejo and Daphne O. Martschenko; and Original Sin by Kathryn Paige Harden have a great deal in common, with substantial differences in style and emphasis. Both books attempt, in different ways, to show the reader just where current research into human genomics stands, where that might be going, and why the authors are interested. In short, the influence of genomic research on our societies is already large and seems likely to change them in ways...
By Dan Falk, Nautilus | 08.20.2026
The pseudoscience of eugenics, founded on the mistaken notion that nature envisions some “right” combination of genes, and that selective breeding can improve the human race, is making a comeback. While the heyday of eugenics was a century ago, the...
By Emily Packard Dawson and Lainie Friedman Ross, MedPage Today | 08.18.2026
Few things evoke a greater sense of desperation than a parent seeking an experimental treatment for their child. That desperation can make even extraordinary risks seem worth taking. This dynamic has come into stark relief after Mei, a 6-year-old girl...
By Editors, Nature | 08.18.2026
Shinya Yamanaka doesn’t see himself as a celebrity. But people do recognize the stem-cell researcher when he’s out for a run, often while training for a marathon, on the streets of Kyoto, Japan.
Many of them call out words of...
