Cochlear Implant in Fully Functional Ear
So I've had a thought over the past few days, medically used cochlear implants have been around for a while, mostly used to replace non-functioning ears (or poorly functioning ears). Noting now that I've done only mild research into the technology and how it works, I thought I'd ask a couple questions. (Covering a few of the things I do know, small device with receiver just under the skin, receives analog power from external device usually worn behind the ear, signals get relayed to the working part of the ear (forget what part that is exactly), interpreted by the brain as sound.)
Would having one of these interfere with the function of the actual ear in any way were someone to somehow get one implanted in a perfectly good ear?
Would any of you opt to have such an implant if it were... you know... affordable and... not... frowned upon by the larger medical field?
I've been thinking about our attempts at bone conducting Bluetooth implants, and thought that maybe... rather than trying to invent a new technology we should just better an existing one, implant the normally ear-worn portion of the device and utilize the already existing technology to handle actual audio relating to the brain. Any thoughts on that?
Would having one of these interfere with the function of the actual ear in any way were someone to somehow get one implanted in a perfectly good ear?
Would any of you opt to have such an implant if it were... you know... affordable and... not... frowned upon by the larger medical field?
I've been thinking about our attempts at bone conducting Bluetooth implants, and thought that maybe... rather than trying to invent a new technology we should just better an existing one, implant the normally ear-worn portion of the device and utilize the already existing technology to handle actual audio relating to the brain. Any thoughts on that?
Comments
Now if we could develop something that could better interface with the nerves like @ThomasEgi suggested that would be great. One interesting aspect of these implants is that while the quality is poor they do have a selection of filters for various environments.
That said, the ultimate "holy grail" back then was to be able to connect directly to the cochlear nerve bypassing the cochlear. No idea what is the progress of that.
Thanks for the feedback, that's what I asked for.
Back to the drawing board. And my data storage implant.
It still damages everything above 1k hz, however.
I was thinking about a similar thing though, if somehow eyes could see in a higher... resolution (for lack of a better word)... currently I can't imagine what that would be like, since my field of view would be the same, I'm only used to seeing things in a higher resolution by getting closer to them or seeing them through some sort of magnifying device, like zooming in on a camera, both of which don't really increase the resolution at which I see, merely expand a portion of what I see to fill my whole field of view. So I have a hard time picturing what it would be like to have the same field of view but still be able to see smaller details. I imagine there's no good way to demonstrate what it would be like, it's sort of like explaining the difference between red and green to a color blind person. How do you describe a color without relating it to other colors?
It is something that's be cool. But without a way to demonstrate it, I can't really describe how it'd be cool.
My 3D printed ears project
Binaural recording headphones
The headphones did a good job and they look pretty discrete. Making something sound like it's actually around you is a matter of a time delay and some subtle changes to pitch. Software can make something sound as though it's any angle around you and the barbershop example @Frank mentioned as well as the "dummy head" microphone recordings are all over YouTube.
Though I did always assume how having more speakers than I have (essentially) input microphones, wouldn't help. Sort of how I also assume how Apple's old 9-pin connectors for iOS devices (other things used them too, I'm aware, Apple was just the biggest user that I can think of) had 9 contacts on the plug, but the USB host End only has 4, I wondered how 9 plugs on one end and 4 on the other was any better than 4 on each end. I never took one apart to see how they were connected though.
That's beside the point.
Good to know about the audio bits being affected by pitch and timing just as much as physical position, I was thinking that incorporating a speaker Array into my desired earpiece was going to be hard.
EDIT: 13-Pin connectors. Sorry. Wrong number. The current lightning ones use 8 though, so the point remains for newer products too.
If you want to snoop on things, most public wifi networks are still unencrypted. That would be fairly easy to "listen" to and convert to some sort of speech that you could hear. Of course individual encrypted traffic on the network would be still be garbled.
Especially since most public wifi networks at restaurants or hotels tend to have the name of the establishment in the name of the network, couple that with at least a pair of antennas designed to pick out the direction a network is in, you could easily "hear" networks and it'd be sort of like if someone was standing in the door at each business shouting "McDonald's over here!" (or other name of other business). Could be useful for navigating in crowded big city spaces. Granted, the chances of you hearing the network before seeing a sign are unlikely...
Then i explained poorly..