Cochlear Implant

A cochlear implant is a surgically implanted neuroprosthesis that gives a person with moderate to profound sensorineural hearing loss a sense of sound by bypassing normal acoustic hearing and directly electrically stimulating the auditory nerve. The French researchers Andre Djourno and Charles Eyries built the original cochlear implant in 1957, and the American surgeon William House developed his own version in 1961; the first international conference on using electrical stimulation of the acoustic nerve to treat profound sensorineural deafness was held in San Francisco in 1973. NASA helped the engineer Adam Kissiah obtain a patent for his own cochlear implant design in 1977, and with training, modern cochlear implants allow both children and adults to learn to interpret the device's electrical signals as speech and everyday sound.