Technological progress: better hearing than normal hearing

deafskeptic said:
1) the power to tell us all about how awful Obama is.
2) The power to be impervious to the powers of logic and critical thinking.
3) the power not to get confused with facts.

MM.. wonder what else he can do?
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Ah, the power to lock up threads.
 
Would this then create a privileged class among the hearing, of super hearers? And a sub class of oppressed average hearing people, who could not afford the surgery?
 
Bottesini said:
Would this then create a privileged class among the hearing, of super hearers? And a sub class of oppressed average hearing people, who could not afford the surgery?
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Could happen. Could also see a new class of "super" soldiers with advanced hearing and vision with the help of technology.
 
kokonut said:
Could happen. Could also see a new class "super" soldiers with advanced hearing and vision with the help of technology.
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those soldiers already have working hearing and vision in the first place. and they are not going to be using enhanced hearing and vision for lovey dovey purpose. it's to enhance their killing skill in swift, efficient manner.
 
Haha, I once wrote a short satirical piece of writing in high school of what could happen if we have devices to make our hearing better than the hearing people hear.

But I think it's interesting to think about that kind of thing, especially regarding our Deaf identity.
 
deafdyke said:
Same old " this might happen." Not impressed at all.......
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I was very impressed when I saw the video. A lot is happening and progress is being made. People don't believe anything until they see it, so I know what you mean. As an example, no one would believe a few decades ago that more than half of all people on Earth could have a mobile, but now they do. More than half of all Indians and Chinese have mobile and lots of people there are still poor. That is progress, in a sense.

The same thing will happen to cochlear implants once the technology is good enough. 20 years ago, mobile phones had a black and white screen and only telephone capability. Now, you have video, camera, blah, blah, blah.... Cochlear implants has to reach the level of normal hearing before they get interesting. But after that, they will be developing quickly and give people super hearing.

deafdyke said:
besides if you can hear better then with normal hearing, insurance companies are not going to cover it at all.
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You are definitely making a point. I come from Northern Europe, so the welfare state would cover the cost for me (provided that the Euro crisis does not worsen).

deafdyke said:
As for the dude who moved from the Special Olympics to the regular Olympics....SO is mostly for people with intellectucal disabilties. Besides there's no rule saying that a disabled person can't parcipate in the regular Olympics....I doubt you have to have perfect hearing to be in the regular Olympics.
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Everyday is an Olympic event for me: Trying to survive in a world run by people are quite different from me. I would like to hear at least a little bit better than I do now (50% hearing in one ear only).
 
kokonut said:
I wanted to see what the current eye implant technology is like as a matter of curiousity sake.

'Bionic Eye' Implant Offers Hope to the Blind : Discovery News

It works....very rudimentary though. Very promising. Good to hear that.
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Glasses are a nice mechanical device to make people see. If there is a problem with the cells themselves, then you are stuck both when it comes to vision and hearing.

It is nice to see electronics devices being fitted to communicate with biological cells. That solves the problems that mechanical devices such as glasses cannot solve.
 
I watched the video in the OP -- very interesting. The presenter basically spoke about how engineering is going to continue to progress on the cellular, tissue and robotic levels. He grouped cochlear implants in the robotic category. :hmm:

One thing that may come up in the future is what expectations, including limitations, will we as a society have towards prosthesics or artificial limbs and organs. I think deafdyke is right, most insurance companies in capitalistic countries will probably not be willing to cover anything that gives people abilities superior to those given by "natural" limbs and organs. That will probably cut off a lot of debate right there.

But development in this area could come from other areas. For example, I think funding for soldiers' health needs comes from a separate source. I could see military interest in not only replacing hearing but interest in "down-shifting" and "tagging" sounds currently beyond human range into the frequency range that our brains had evolved into learning how to handle.

And, IIRC, courntries like North Korea are already doing research into areas like human cloning that many countries have already decided not to allow research within their own borders. Probably areas of research and experimentation allowed in various countries will continue to diverge.
 
HH scientist said:
Glasses are a nice mechanical device to make people see. If there is a problem with the cells themselves, then you are stuck both when it comes to vision and hearing.

It is nice to see electronics devices being fitted to communicate with biological cells. That solves the problems that mechanical devices such as glasses cannot solve.
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There are advances in the area of sight where technology can tap directly into the visual cortex of the brain.
Artificial Vision for the Blind - Brain Implant? Bionic Eye?


What blew me away was when they used a bad heart, stripped away all of its muscle leaving the cartilage behind to serve as a scaffold and stem cells grown from heart muscle was sprayed onto that scaffold creating a new, beating rat heart. I've heard of this scaffolding procedure before but not about the heart.
 
I don't know much about this, but I guess you could send signals to the brain beyond the range of a normal cochlear would produce.

One thing though, a CI converts sound waves to a digital signal just like a digital camera converts light. You can never get better than light or sound itself. This is why vinyl records have better sound than CDs and light cameras are superior to digital ones. You can however make the transfer from analog to digital so specific that a human cannot detect the difference, but it will never be the same thing.

Still, it would be amazing to hear things we could never hear before.
 
VacationGuy234 said:
I don't know much about this, but I guess you could send signals to the brain beyond the range of a normal cochlear would produce.

<snip>

Still, it would be amazing to hear things we could never hear before.
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I was told by someone going for his PhD in audiology that a cochlear implant can be programmed for any range of frequencies.

So we do have the technology, now, to do this and then see how the brain would respond.

Whether this would be ethical or not, even if the person with the CI agreed to the experiment, I don't know.

I do admit to being really curious about whether and how the brain would respond to receiving sounds in this fashion beyond the range of a cochlear implant.
 
Jazzberry said:
I was told by someone going for his PhD in audiology that a cochlear implant can theoratically be programmed for any range of frequencies.

So we do have the technology, now, to do this and then see how the brain would respond.

Whether this would be ethical or not, even if the person with the CI agreed to the experiment, I don't know.

I do admit to being really curious about whether and how the brain would respond to receiving sounds in this fashion beyond the range of a cochlear implant.
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Yet, our cochlea is limited in range on the frequency it is able to detect. That's the physical limitation but nothing is said about tapping directly into the auditory cortex of the brain.
 
kokonut said:
There are advances in the area of sight where technology can tap directly into the visual cortex of the brain.
Artificial Vision for the Blind - Brain Implant? Bionic Eye?


What blew me away was when they used a bad heart, stripped away all of its muscle leaving the cartilage behind to serve as a scaffold and stem cells grown from heart muscle was sprayed onto that scaffold creating a new, beating rat heart. I've heard of this scaffolding procedure before but not about the heart.
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In the video that I posted before, Juan Enriquez speaks about growing organs using existing cells. Check this: Juan Enriquez shares mindboggling science | Video on TED.com, [10:50-12:30].

We can probably use organs grown in a lab for blood transfusion, organ transplants, skin transplants, etc. It is more complex when it comes to the nervous system and hearing is a part of this.

I am not in biotechnology or medicine, but I think it works something like this.

People have lost hearing for different reasons, so you have to know the possibilities before attempting a solution. A cochlear implant uses a microphone and converts the sound to electric signals that the cells in the cochlear nerve understands. If the cells in the cochlear nerve are somewhat OK, you can connect an electrode to the cochlear nerve which in turn transmits the signals to the brain. No cochlear nerve, no cochlear implant.

The problem for people without a functional cochlear nerve would then be solved by growing cells in lab which can then be inserted into a person. But this is complicated. First, we do not have complete understanding of how to connect the cochlear nerve to the brain.

Second, if there is no cochlear nerve is person or the cells grow a cochlear nerve but are not functional for some reason (i.e. they cannot transmit electric signals) then you are stuck. In that case, you would have to use stem cells which can grow any organ. But stem cells are inherently complex (if they don't grow, then you don't get your organ, and if they grow too much, they are probably cancerous).
 
VacationGuy234 said:
One thing though, a CI converts sound waves to a digital signal just like a digital camera converts light. You can never get better than light or sound itself. This is why vinyl records have better sound than CDs and light cameras are superior to digital ones. You can however make the transfer from analog to digital so specific that a human cannot detect the difference, but it will never be the same thing.
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I am not an audiologist or anything. I think that we have to understand how the nervous system works properly before making cochlear implants useful. As far as I understand, no cochlear implant has ever been better than two normal ears
 
HH scientist said:
I am not an audiologist or anything. I think that we have to understand how the nervous system works properly before making cochlear implants useful. As far as I understand, no cochlear implant has ever been better than two normal ears
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Given how technology and biotechnology improves constantly, we can expect that someday where improvements can be made for the typical human senses, mostly in the vision and auditory areas.
 
kokonut said:
Yet, our cochlea is limited in range on the frequency it is able to detect. That's the physical limitation but nothing is said about tapping directly into the auditory cortex of the brain.
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Certainly, it's possible that our auditory nerve may be capable of transmitting information that is more finely calibrated and has a wider range than the cilia nerves in our cochlea -- but I don't think we can know that for sure until we actually try it.

Since there's never been a reason for it to process that kind of information (more finely calibrated and covering a wider range of information), it would be logical if it can't. Or if it can -- not in much greater detail. From an evolutionary point or even an intelligent designer point of view -- there is no reason for our auditory nerve to be capable of it. But we can't know for sure until we actually "test" it.

AFAIK, our biological systems work together hand in glove so to speak. I don't believe it's a coincidence that the human ear that hears within statistically normal ranges is most sensitive to sounds that are within the human speech range.
 
HH scientist said:
I am not an audiologist or anything. I think that we have to understand how the nervous system works properly before making cochlear implants useful. As far as I understand, no cochlear implant has ever been better than two normal ears
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I've carefully researched CIs and am open to the idea of having one. But the hard fact is that what you can hear via the latest CIs are nowhere near what a normal* ear hears. I'm not sure they ever will. For example a normal* ear has around 15,000 hair cells to send sound information to the brain. The current generation of CIs have a mere 24 electrodes to do the same job.

CI is a cure for deafness in the way two wooden sticks are a cure for missing legs. Sure I can "walk" again, but don't tell me that I can walk like a normal* person.

[*By "normal" I mean "the majority" - NOT "normal" as a standard for everyone to be measured against.]
 
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