When Sam Swiller used hearing aids, his musical tastes ran to loud bands with lots of drums and bass. But after Swiller got a cochlear implant in 2005, he found that sort of music less appealing. “I was getting pushed away from sounds I used to love,” he says, “but also being more attracted to sounds that I never appreciated before.” So he began listening to folk and alternative music, including the Icelandic singer Bjork.

There are lots of stories like this among people who get cochlear implants. And there’s a good reason. A cochlear implant isn’t just a fancy hearing aid. “A hearing aid is really just an amplifier,” says Jessica Phillips-Silver, a neuroscience researcher at Georgetown University. “The cochlear implant is actually bypassing the damaged part of the ear and delivering electrical impulses directly to the auditory nerve.”

As a result, the experience of listening to music or any other sound through the ear, with or without a hearing aid, can be completely unlike the experience of listening through a cochlear implant. “You’re basically remapping the audio world,” Swiller says.

 

 

A cochlear implant is designed to do one thing really well — allow users to understand speech.

“Where it is somewhat lacking is more in relating information about pitch and timbre,” says Phillips-Silver. Current implants simply leave out much of the information needed to tell the difference between notes that are close together on a keyboard or instruments that sound similar, she says.

Although current cochlear implants are far from perfect, they are changing lives in a profound way. Please visit our website to experience a simulation of sound through a cochlear implant. Also, we have posted video footage of the moment a cochlear implant is turned on and people hear for the first time.

*** If you would like to experience the difference between normal and cochlear hearing follow this link to Sam Swiller‘s story and scroll down. In the section called “A Boy’s Audio Life”, there are two snips of music, on the right side of the article: the first one Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love” as with normal hearing and the second, just below it, is as with a cochlear implant.

OR this is another video of a cochlear implant simulation on Youtube:
https://youtu.be/iwbwhfCWs2Q
 

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