Thursday, August 23, 2007
documentary?
So, I'm trying to decide if I should make a documentary, documenting my cochlear implant process. I have a digital video camera, Windows Movie Maker (although my computer basically sucks...)... hm. Maybe if I could get a better computer to make the documentary on... Oh I don't know. I just think it'd be fun. Even if I don't make a documentary, it'd still be fun to document the process. I am planning on taking my video camera with me to the evaluation appointment on the 17th. Absolutely! I have extra blank tapes too... somewhere. It's just a matter of finding them. Yep.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
ooo what did I just find tonight?
HOLY CRAP! I can't believe I actually found my left hearing aid! Wow, after all this time.. We've been living in this house for more than 3 years now, and just tonight I found my left hearing aid.
I only started wearing a hearing aid in my left ear again after the CI audiologist, Allison Biever (she works for Rocky Mountain CI Center in Denver), told me I should wear it to keep the nerve and whatnot stimulated, whether or not I could hear anything. She told me this at the CNI Cochlear Kids Camp in 2003, so I started to wear a hearing aid again after getting a mold made for the left ear. But Like oh maybe after a few months, I stopped wearing it again. And after graduating high school, my mom and I moved in with her boyfriend, and all of my junk got misplaced or put away.
I was rather surprised to see the old purple hearing aid with the left earmold, sitting in the small bowl that I had made in pottery class, in a gift bag. Wow. Unbelievable. At least I have the hearing aid back again. But will I wear it again? I don't know. We'll see.
I only started wearing a hearing aid in my left ear again after the CI audiologist, Allison Biever (she works for Rocky Mountain CI Center in Denver), told me I should wear it to keep the nerve and whatnot stimulated, whether or not I could hear anything. She told me this at the CNI Cochlear Kids Camp in 2003, so I started to wear a hearing aid again after getting a mold made for the left ear. But Like oh maybe after a few months, I stopped wearing it again. And after graduating high school, my mom and I moved in with her boyfriend, and all of my junk got misplaced or put away.
I was rather surprised to see the old purple hearing aid with the left earmold, sitting in the small bowl that I had made in pottery class, in a gift bag. Wow. Unbelievable. At least I have the hearing aid back again. But will I wear it again? I don't know. We'll see.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
an interesting article
Well, I came across this article a couple days ago or so, and thought it was a really interesting read. Advanced technologies to use with the internal component of a cochlear implant is being studied. The article was written by the author of "Rebuilt," which is neat.
Friday, August 10, 2007
Making Deaf Ears Hear with Light
A laser-based approach could make cochlear implants, which currently use electrical signals, more effective.
By Michael Chorost
About 100,000 profoundly deaf people now hear with cochlear implants, which work by stimulating the auditory nerve with a string of electrodes implanted in the inner ear. While the devices enable many users to converse easily and use telephones, they still fall short of restoring normal hearing. Now scientists at Northwestern University are exploring whether laser-based implants could one day outperform today's electrical version.
The mammalian ear uses neural firing rates as one way of encoding sound. 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. They are now trying to establish that it's safe to use for long periods of time and that it can manipulate neural firing rates with enough precision to send useful information to the brain.
With conventional cochlear implants, electrical signals spread in the wet, salty environment of the body, muddying the signal. That makes it difficult to trigger specific populations of nerves inside the cochlea. Further complicating matters, simultaneous pulses in different locations merge with each other, stimulating the cochlea everywhere instead of in the desired locations.
Engineers work around the problem by triggering only one or two of the 16 or 24 electrodes in the inner ear at a time. It's done so rapidly that the user has the illusion that all of the electrodes are firing, but the result is still a relatively crude simulation of normal hearing. To many cochlear implant users, voices sound mechanical and music sounds washed out.
An infrared laser, on the other hand, can be beamed at nerve fibers with pinpoint accuracy. Furthermore, the directional nature of laser light means that optical pulses in different places won't interfere with each other. The increased precision of neural stimulation would make voices and music sound more natural, and users would be able to converse in noisy environments more easily.
While it's not yet clear why infrared radiation can trigger activity in the auditory nerves, Richter hypothesizes that it heats the cells slightly, opening ion channels in the cell walls and sending an electrical signal down the length of the neuron.
A major question is whether it's safe to stimulate nerves in this way for long periods of time. So far, Richter and his colleagues have shown that auditory nerves in anesthetized gerbils can be stimulated with infrared laser radiation for up to six hours without damage. At present it's not feasible to run the tests for longer, but Richter is planning long-term studies in animals with permanently implanted devices.
The researchers are also figuring out how to precisely control neuron activity with lasers. The ear encodes pitch and loudness not just by firing nerves in particular places, but also by modifying the rate at which they fire. So far, Richter has shown that laser radiation can reliably make neurons fire up to 250 times per second, which is comparable to the rate at which early-model conventional cochlear implants drive neurons.
Human trials are years away, but there are several ways in which infrared technology might be used to build a working cochlear implant. One is to use fiber optics instead of electrodes in an array inserted inside the cochlea, somewhat similarly to the way conventional cochlear implants now use electrodes. Early trials of such a system might involve replacing one or two electrodes of a conventional implant with fiber optics to test their effect. Another is to put an optical fiber bundle in front of the cochlea's round window to stimulate auditory neurons without opening the cochlea. (The round window is a thin membrane in the cochlea that absorbs fluid displacement as sound waves travel through it.)
An even more futuristic possibility is to use gene therapy to make auditory neurons responsive to particular wavelengths of light. At MIT, Ed Boyden has been altering nerve cells' genes so that they fire when exposed to one wavelength of light and stop firing when exposed to another. According to Richter, this approach would require less power to activate cells, which might be safer in the long run. Of course, this approach carries all the caveats that typically accompany gene therapy and would require a way to precisely deliver gene therapy to the relevant auditory cells.
"If proven safe and efficacious, optical stimulation could open up ultra-high density stimulation interfaces for the peripheral nervous system," says Boyden. "The process of combining optics and neurons may also pave the way for many future innovations - moving beyond the ubiquitous electrode to new modalities of neural control."
Sound effects: An optical cochlear implant would bypass these inner ear hair
cells (above), which are nonfunctional in many cases of profound deafness.
Optical radiation would stimulate the neurons that are normally triggered by the
motion of these microscopic fibers in response to sound vibrations. Credit:
Steve Gschmeissner / Photo Researchers, Inc.
Friday, August 10, 2007
Making Deaf Ears Hear with Light
A laser-based approach could make cochlear implants, which currently use electrical signals, more effective.
By Michael Chorost
About 100,000 profoundly deaf people now hear with cochlear implants, which work by stimulating the auditory nerve with a string of electrodes implanted in the inner ear. While the devices enable many users to converse easily and use telephones, they still fall short of restoring normal hearing. Now scientists at Northwestern University are exploring whether laser-based implants could one day outperform today's electrical version.
The mammalian ear uses neural firing rates as one way of encoding sound. 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. They are now trying to establish that it's safe to use for long periods of time and that it can manipulate neural firing rates with enough precision to send useful information to the brain.
With conventional cochlear implants, electrical signals spread in the wet, salty environment of the body, muddying the signal. That makes it difficult to trigger specific populations of nerves inside the cochlea. Further complicating matters, simultaneous pulses in different locations merge with each other, stimulating the cochlea everywhere instead of in the desired locations.
Engineers work around the problem by triggering only one or two of the 16 or 24 electrodes in the inner ear at a time. It's done so rapidly that the user has the illusion that all of the electrodes are firing, but the result is still a relatively crude simulation of normal hearing. To many cochlear implant users, voices sound mechanical and music sounds washed out.
An infrared laser, on the other hand, can be beamed at nerve fibers with pinpoint accuracy. Furthermore, the directional nature of laser light means that optical pulses in different places won't interfere with each other. The increased precision of neural stimulation would make voices and music sound more natural, and users would be able to converse in noisy environments more easily.
While it's not yet clear why infrared radiation can trigger activity in the auditory nerves, Richter hypothesizes that it heats the cells slightly, opening ion channels in the cell walls and sending an electrical signal down the length of the neuron.
A major question is whether it's safe to stimulate nerves in this way for long periods of time. So far, Richter and his colleagues have shown that auditory nerves in anesthetized gerbils can be stimulated with infrared laser radiation for up to six hours without damage. At present it's not feasible to run the tests for longer, but Richter is planning long-term studies in animals with permanently implanted devices.
The researchers are also figuring out how to precisely control neuron activity with lasers. The ear encodes pitch and loudness not just by firing nerves in particular places, but also by modifying the rate at which they fire. So far, Richter has shown that laser radiation can reliably make neurons fire up to 250 times per second, which is comparable to the rate at which early-model conventional cochlear implants drive neurons.
Human trials are years away, but there are several ways in which infrared technology might be used to build a working cochlear implant. One is to use fiber optics instead of electrodes in an array inserted inside the cochlea, somewhat similarly to the way conventional cochlear implants now use electrodes. Early trials of such a system might involve replacing one or two electrodes of a conventional implant with fiber optics to test their effect. Another is to put an optical fiber bundle in front of the cochlea's round window to stimulate auditory neurons without opening the cochlea. (The round window is a thin membrane in the cochlea that absorbs fluid displacement as sound waves travel through it.)
An even more futuristic possibility is to use gene therapy to make auditory neurons responsive to particular wavelengths of light. At MIT, Ed Boyden has been altering nerve cells' genes so that they fire when exposed to one wavelength of light and stop firing when exposed to another. According to Richter, this approach would require less power to activate cells, which might be safer in the long run. Of course, this approach carries all the caveats that typically accompany gene therapy and would require a way to precisely deliver gene therapy to the relevant auditory cells.
"If proven safe and efficacious, optical stimulation could open up ultra-high density stimulation interfaces for the peripheral nervous system," says Boyden. "The process of combining optics and neurons may also pave the way for many future innovations - moving beyond the ubiquitous electrode to new modalities of neural control."
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
it's set!
Monday, September 17th is the cochlear implant evaluation appointment date, at 11 a.m. Woot! Now I'm anxious for that date to approach. Heeeee.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
September?
Cochlear implant evaluation will happen sometime in September. The first opening they have is Sept. 12, but that's right in the middle of the week. It would be easier if it was a Monday appointment, that way we can go down on Sunday, I can go through the evaluation on Tuesday while Mom and Rob do whatever they want to do (evaluation will take a few hours, no need to have them sit around waiting for hours being bored). Then we come home either Monday night or Tuesday in the morning. I emailed the CI Center's director back and asked if there were any openings on a Monday. Getting closer! I'm getting kind of excited. Of course, I shouldn't get my hopes up. I mean, it's just an evaluation to determine if I'm a candidate. I shouldn't just assume I'll be a candidate, cause I won't know until after the evaluation. But we'll find out.
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
straightened out a bit
Sooo... They can determine eligibility just from doing an evaluation only. Ok, good enough for me! Do the evaluation, worry about the cat scan stuff LATER. I don't really see the implant surgery happening anytime soon anyway, since I'm still trying to find out more about the insurance thing at the Star Tribune. So I'll let the center and the founder of Meningitis Angels work out costs, and let the founder get the approval to pay for the evaluation, then an appointment will be set up. Let's just worry about getting through the evaluation and find out if I'm a candidate. And if I am, then I'll work on getting the money to pay for the cat scans later on, and go from there.
confusions
Turns out there was some confusion over the evaluation price. The evaluation part costs more than $300, but for those paying out their pocket (those without insurance typically) would be given some sort of discount apparently? I don't know. If I were to do the FULL evaluation, with the doctor visit and all, that'd be over $600, and I have to get the cat scan done locally. Oh gee, cat scan of the head, now that's gonna be a bit pricey. So right now I'm thinking, lets do basic evaluation, with the hearing test and what not, and worry about the cat scan and doctor visit some other time. But we'll see what Meningitis Angels says. The founder, she says she'll call the implant center for more information on the cost, as she and the Organization want to help out somehow. So now, I'll just wait and see what happens.
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