Cochlear implants and the debate within the deaf community. Arguing that cochlear implants have been beneficial for the deaf community - Research Paper Example

Download file to see previous pages The external components of the implant contains a microphone that is to be worn behind the ear of the patient, attached to a magnetic transmitter, which is attached to the earpiece and a sound processor. Once the implantation is complete, an audiologist uses a computer to set the speech processor for the patient. The audiologist sets the processor and programmes it to the appropriate levels of auditory stimulation between sound received from environment and brain nerve cells (Cochlear 1; Ouellette 1248).
Once the processor is set, the microphone receives sounds from the environment and sends it to the speech processor, which then performs computation, and transforms the sound to electrical codes and digital format. The digital codes are sent to the outer ear component as coded signals bypassing the ear hairs. The magnetic transformer behind the ear then takes these codes, transforms them to electrodes arrays, and interfaces them to the cochlea. Then the internal device in the cochlea takes these arrays and stimulates the auditory nerves fibers that are connected to the brain, whereby the arrays are sent by the auditory nerve of the person to the brain for interpretation (Cochlear 1). This paper seeks to establish that cochlear implants technology is beneficial to the deaf community despite their opposition to the implants during their inception.
In order to alleviate fears of the deaf community there have been improvements in cochlea implants technology over time and hence increased rate of success to patients who have undergone the procedure. Ideally, the procedure is meant to be applied to infants born deaf or those who have developed deafness in their early days. This is because cognitive development of a child into their senses and environment occurs between the ages of 0-3 years. Hence, if the procedure is undertaken during this ...Download file to see next pagesRead More