Many people with hearing impairments in modern society choose to use artificial cochlea to help them recover their basic hearing, but this tradition Hearing aid The loudspeakers, voice processors, and radio transmitter coils are all exposed to the outside, and many people feel embarrassed when wearing them in public places.In response to this situation, a research team at the University of Utah in the United States has recently developed a revolutionary new type of hearing aid device, which is implanted in the middle ear of the patient and is invisible from the surface.The research report was published on the website of the “Electronic and Electrical Engineering” magazine.
Certain elements of traditional artificial cochlear hearing aids are clearly exposed
According to a report on the British “Daily Mail” website on April 4, researchers have created a model of a new type of hearing aid, which is the same size as the eraser on a traditional pencil and weighs only 30 milligrams. It has not been tested on humans.Professor Darin Young of the research team said that before conducting human tests, researchers will try to reduce its size by one-third, and further improve the noise reduction equipment and other aspects.
The new hearing aid uses an acceleration sensor to allow sound to pass through the ear canal to the eardrum, just like a normal person
The loudspeaker, signal processor and transmitter coil on the traditional cochlear implant are all exposed outside the ear. Professor Yang said: “The exposure of these components is a shortcoming of traditional hearing aids. Many children may not be able to swim and ride bicycles safely. There are also problems with caps. For adults, wearing such devices in public places indicates that they have physical defects and are worried about negative effects. This makes a considerable number of people refuse to use artificial cochleaes. Hearing aid . “
The main working principle of traditional hearing aids is to use a radio transmitter coil to transmit a signal to a receiver implanted under the skin, and the receiver transmits the signal to electrodes in the cochlea designed to stimulate the auditory nerve.This process bypasses organs such as the ear canal, eardrum, and ossicles.The working principle of this new type of hearing aid developed by the University of Utah is somewhat different from the traditional one. It uses an acceleration sensor to allow sound to pass through the ear canal to the eardrum. Just like a normal person, the sensor and the chip can be connected to act as a loudspeaker. The function of it is to obtain sound vibrations from the outside world, and then convert them into electronic signals and transmit them to the electrodes in the cochlea.But this kind of device also requires the user to wear a charger behind the ear to charge the device while sleeping at night.
Funding for this research came from the National Institutes of Health.The researchers said that human trials of the new hearing aid are expected to be carried out in 3 years. (Source: Xinhuanet)
