BIONIC HEARING
The leading cause of deafness is damage to the sensitive hairs of the inner ear (cochlea), known as sensorineural hearing loss.
For people with severe hearing loss, the only therapeutic intervention available is the cochlear implant or “bionic ear”. This is one of the world's most successful medical bionic devices, which has enabled hearing for over 150,000 people worldwide.
[how a bionic ear works]
However, the bionic ear has some shortcomings – particularly its performance in noisy environments, the appreciation of music and perception of tonal languages (such as Mandarin and Cantonese).
A significant part of our research involves addressing these issues and developing a new generation of bionic ears.
