Sure - no problem. Just to give you some context, I got my implant in 1991, and technology has advanced by leaps and bounds since then.
Cochlear implants are quite different than hearing aids. Hearing aids just amplify sounds. Cochlear implants actually directly stimulates your auditory nerve via a surgical implant, mimicking sound. Normally, sound waves pass through your cochlea and stimulate the multiple hair cells, triggering different "sounds" (as interpreted by your brain). Since the cochlear implant stimulates the auditory nerve more directly, once a person is implanted, the person loses all of his or her residuary hearing. Obviously, only people with profound or severe hearing losses are allowed to get a cochlear implant.
My cochlear implant has two components - the inner and external portions. The external portion is the speech processor and it looks somewhat like a hearing aid without the ear mold and it has a magnetic part that attaches to your head. The speech processor converts sounds into electrical signals that goes through a magnet that is attached to my head. The electrical signal will pass through the internal parts of my cochlear implant (the implants itself) and stimulate the nerve, causing me to hear sound. I should add that the conversion process filters out most background noises and focuses on frequencies used for speech. As a result, I can't really appreciate music because with the limited frequency range of the cochlear implant, music sounds all muddled to me.
Of course, that's the technical part. I can hear, but I can't hear anywhere as well as a hearing person. I still have a lot of difficulties hearing in a noisy situation, such as restaurants, bars, etc. I can't really differentiate between certain sounds such as b/ps, g/hs and the like.
I can, however, converse with most people. I have an "accent" because I learned how to speak relatively late - 8 years old. I have met people who got their implants when they were two or three and they barely have an accent.
One thing I should also add - most people who receive a cochlear implant need special training to use it. Since I was one of the first 500 children to receive a cochlear implant after the FDA approved it for children, I underwent intensive speech-and-listening training. I had to learn how to listen since I had no frame of reference for sound. I'm sure you can imagine how hard it is to get a six-year old to sit still and practice listening for hours at a time. It took me two years before I could start learning how to speak. I didn't feel comfortable speaking in public until I was thirteen or so.
Of course, the process is quite different for someone who heard before they got an implant because he or she has a frame of reference. After talking to younger implant recipients, I get the impression that the technology and training methods have improved, so the whole process isn't as onerous anymore.
Hopefully this wasn't too much information and if I misstated something (probably biology-related) I apologize in advance! If you have more questions, feel free to ask!
You know, I was thinking about this recently. Since the operation is quite expensive (tens of thousands of dollars), insurance coverage is a must. It's hard to get insurance coverage for a new internal component if mine is still functional. Also, today's technology - in terms of the internal component - is not that much better than what I got in 1991. For example, right now I have 22 channels, but the best that one can get today is 24 channels. The improvement is relatively small for the amount of hassle that I would have to go through to get that improvement - surgery, recovery time, etc.
Like all surgeries, cochlear implant surgery has risks. I don't want to take heedless risks, so I'm content with what I have for right now. Although I think I would get the surgery if the implant was 100% internal - no more external parts!
The speech and listening training sounds very similar to what I went through with my hearing aids, called auditory-verbal therapy. I've got severe/profound loss in both ears, but I never really learned ASL since I was diagnosed ~2 and started early. Thanks for sharing your story!
(If you're doing something dangerous, do not play the sound, it's profoundly disturbing to most people who have full hearing the first time they hear it).
There is a better link I cannot find that shows speech, music (which doesn't work well), and various other things through them.
Neat! I've never bothered to go to these websites before.
Although I should point out that most people today who have cochlear implants have 22 or 24 channels, not one. I have 22 channels in one ear and 24 in the other. (You have to click through to get to these channels though).
As I mentioned before, I never really developed appreciation for music. It's probably a result of never really hearing music as it should be heard. Oh well.
I don't know about profoundly disturbing myself, but the 4-channel sample sure does sound odd, almost creepy. but what I thought was neat-o was that at 22 channels, it was a pretty decent approximation of how Alan Alda "normally" sounds.
Really? Interesting. All these years, I've been wondering "what in the hell do hearing people HEAR?" Good to know that perhaps my hearing is not as drastically different from others as I feared.
Let me try to describe the difference between 24 channel implants vs typical human hearing (as seen in recordings):
You can tell what many people are saying very close to as well as normal hearing says, at least in English. The experience is comparable to a particularly static filled radio connection.
I imagine languages such as chinese would be considerably more difficult, as you miss a lot of the "tone" of the voice, as well as the movement up or down (which they rely heavily on). I imagine it's sometimes hard to tell if people are asking a question or not from inflection alone compared to typical hearing.
Music does sound completely different in an implant (remember, I don't have one, I've just heard recordings), especially classical symphonic music as used for emotive sections of TV shows/movies, or to manage viewer tension. Pop music seems to come across rhythm wise, but you often are missing some of that same tonality above, and so I'm not sure you'd get the same tension/release cycle that's key to enjoying music in the way many typical hearing people do. I say this especially as you will not hear much of the discordant resolving that's so key to the experience.
Learning what pitches your channels are set at could possibly allow you to find particular works which allow you to experience this, but you'd have to talk to a music theory geek to really go further with this line of talk.
Comments
Can you tell us more about the cochlear implant? I've never met someone who has one (that I know of).
Sure - no problem. Just to give you some context, I got my implant in 1991, and technology has advanced by leaps and bounds since then.
Cochlear implants are quite different than hearing aids. Hearing aids just amplify sounds. Cochlear implants actually directly stimulates your auditory nerve via a surgical implant, mimicking sound. Normally, sound waves pass through your cochlea and stimulate the multiple hair cells, triggering different "sounds" (as interpreted by your brain). Since the cochlear implant stimulates the auditory nerve more directly, once a person is implanted, the person loses all of his or her residuary hearing. Obviously, only people with profound or severe hearing losses are allowed to get a cochlear implant.
My cochlear implant has two components - the inner and external portions. The external portion is the speech processor and it looks somewhat like a hearing aid without the ear mold and it has a magnetic part that attaches to your head. The speech processor converts sounds into electrical signals that goes through a magnet that is attached to my head. The electrical signal will pass through the internal parts of my cochlear implant (the implants itself) and stimulate the nerve, causing me to hear sound. I should add that the conversion process filters out most background noises and focuses on frequencies used for speech. As a result, I can't really appreciate music because with the limited frequency range of the cochlear implant, music sounds all muddled to me.
Of course, that's the technical part. I can hear, but I can't hear anywhere as well as a hearing person. I still have a lot of difficulties hearing in a noisy situation, such as restaurants, bars, etc. I can't really differentiate between certain sounds such as b/ps, g/hs and the like.
I can, however, converse with most people. I have an "accent" because I learned how to speak relatively late - 8 years old. I have met people who got their implants when they were two or three and they barely have an accent.
One thing I should also add - most people who receive a cochlear implant need special training to use it. Since I was one of the first 500 children to receive a cochlear implant after the FDA approved it for children, I underwent intensive speech-and-listening training. I had to learn how to listen since I had no frame of reference for sound. I'm sure you can imagine how hard it is to get a six-year old to sit still and practice listening for hours at a time. It took me two years before I could start learning how to speak. I didn't feel comfortable speaking in public until I was thirteen or so.
Of course, the process is quite different for someone who heard before they got an implant because he or she has a frame of reference. After talking to younger implant recipients, I get the impression that the technology and training methods have improved, so the whole process isn't as onerous anymore.
Hopefully this wasn't too much information and if I misstated something (probably biology-related) I apologize in advance! If you have more questions, feel free to ask!
Do you consider getting an upgraded implant someday, or is that not practical?
You know, I was thinking about this recently. Since the operation is quite expensive (tens of thousands of dollars), insurance coverage is a must. It's hard to get insurance coverage for a new internal component if mine is still functional. Also, today's technology - in terms of the internal component - is not that much better than what I got in 1991. For example, right now I have 22 channels, but the best that one can get today is 24 channels. The improvement is relatively small for the amount of hassle that I would have to go through to get that improvement - surgery, recovery time, etc.
Like all surgeries, cochlear implant surgery has risks. I don't want to take heedless risks, so I'm content with what I have for right now. Although I think I would get the surgery if the implant was 100% internal - no more external parts!
The speech and listening training sounds very similar to what I went through with my hearing aids, called auditory-verbal therapy. I've got severe/profound loss in both ears, but I never really learned ASL since I was diagnosed ~2 and started early. Thanks for sharing your story!
You can hear what they sound like:
http://www.pbs.org/saf/1205/features/Interactive/channel1.ht...
(If you're doing something dangerous, do not play the sound, it's profoundly disturbing to most people who have full hearing the first time they hear it).
There is a better link I cannot find that shows speech, music (which doesn't work well), and various other things through them.
Neat! I've never bothered to go to these websites before.
Although I should point out that most people today who have cochlear implants have 22 or 24 channels, not one. I have 22 channels in one ear and 24 in the other. (You have to click through to get to these channels though).
As I mentioned before, I never really developed appreciation for music. It's probably a result of never really hearing music as it should be heard. Oh well.
I don't know about profoundly disturbing myself, but the 4-channel sample sure does sound odd, almost creepy. but what I thought was neat-o was that at 22 channels, it was a pretty decent approximation of how Alan Alda "normally" sounds.
Really? Interesting. All these years, I've been wondering "what in the hell do hearing people HEAR?" Good to know that perhaps my hearing is not as drastically different from others as I feared.
Let me try to describe the difference between 24 channel implants vs typical human hearing (as seen in recordings):
You can tell what many people are saying very close to as well as normal hearing says, at least in English. The experience is comparable to a particularly static filled radio connection.
I imagine languages such as chinese would be considerably more difficult, as you miss a lot of the "tone" of the voice, as well as the movement up or down (which they rely heavily on). I imagine it's sometimes hard to tell if people are asking a question or not from inflection alone compared to typical hearing.
Music does sound completely different in an implant (remember, I don't have one, I've just heard recordings), especially classical symphonic music as used for emotive sections of TV shows/movies, or to manage viewer tension. Pop music seems to come across rhythm wise, but you often are missing some of that same tonality above, and so I'm not sure you'd get the same tension/release cycle that's key to enjoying music in the way many typical hearing people do. I say this especially as you will not hear much of the discordant resolving that's so key to the experience.
Learning what pitches your channels are set at could possibly allow you to find particular works which allow you to experience this, but you'd have to talk to a music theory geek to really go further with this line of talk.
up voted for Alan Alda joke
Here is the other link!
http://www.hei.org/research/aip/audiodemos.htm
Has the music through the implant.