IMPLANTING TUNES: Ray Goldsworthy helps patients with cochlear implants regain their ability to enjoy music.
Ray Goldsworthy lost his hearing when he was 12 years old. A case of spinal meningitis caused swelling in his central nervous system that resulted in irreparable damage to the neurons of the cochlea, the inner-ear structure that converts incoming sound waves into neural signals sent to the brain. A year later, Goldsworthy became one of the first children to receive a cochlear implant as part of a 1987 pediatric trial. He could hear again, but his auditory sense wasn’t the same.
A lot of things about using a cochlear implant (CI) take getting used to. The devices comprise an external microphone, a sound processor, and an electrode array that stimulates the cochlear nerve according to the output of an algorithm programmed into the processor. ...
