Interview Part 1

My name is Michael Chorost, and so, my claim to fame for the purposes of this conversation is my first book. So, this is a memoir that I wrote of going deaf and learning how to hear all over again with a cochlear implant. I actually brought these two copies along to give to your team, so you can just have these books. >>Thank you so much. >>Give this to you guys. I would have brought four, but I didn't have four. Anyway, you can share them among your team. So, my background, as I was telling- >>Jeremy. >>-Jeremy, is education technology. So I spent a lot of time thinking about the intersection of technology, education, culture in my own doctoral program. So since then I've been a freelance science writer, so I've just come out with a second book titled "World Wide Mind" which takes some of the ideas of the first book and raises them to a more general level. Can we actually read brain activity, can we alter brain activity, can we use that to communicate, what are the implications? So at this point I'd essentially describe myself as itinerant philosopher. I write books, give talks, think big thoughts. >>All right. How about we go around the room then? >>I want to ask you about how has cochlear implant changing your own life? >>Changing my own life? Particularly. OK, well, all right, let me give you a little bit of background so you can understand what my life was before I got a cochlear implant. So, my mother had rubella when she was pregnant with me in 1964, so I was born with severe hearing loss in both ears. But I wasn't diagnosed until I was about three and a half years old. So I got hearing aids at that age, and I began to learn spoken language pretty rapidly from that point on. So I learned it well enough. So between the ages of three and thirty six, I was fully integrated into the hearing world, I did not learn sign language, I was just someone with a hearing loss. But then, on July 7, 2001, I abruptly lost all my remaining hearing in my one good ear, in my left ear. So, I thought my batteries were dying in my hearing aids. It wasn't the batteries, it was my ears that were dying. So, shortly thereafter, I got a cochlear implant in my left ear. And, about eight years later, I got another cochlear implant in my right ear. So, as to how it changed my life, that's a multi-leveled kind of question. So before, I had always had a life as a person in the hearing world, using English as my primary language of communication. So that didn't change. What did change was that the way I heard was completely different. So I now had a computer in my head that was taking sound from the outside world, digitizing it, feeding it to my auditory nerves, so at first things sounded completely bizarre. And it took me about a year to learn to hear all over again. So, the first couple months, I would turn the radio on, and I would hear just jibberish. And I had always been a radio listener my whole life. So it sounded like language, but I could not make out a single word. So I had to practice; I had to learn how to hear all over again, to map the sounds of language onto words that made sense in my range. So, now, I use the phone all the time, I listen to the radio, but it's a protracted learning process. [pause] >>How-how aware are you of the inner workings of the cochlear implant? And, you said you had hearing aids before, you mentioned that there was a little bit of new learning that had to happen, but, the actual inner workings of the technology, how aware are you of that? >>Well let's talk about the inner workings first. So, I brought along two cochlear implants to show you guys. >>Oh, great. >>You know, so I'll just hold that up to the camera so you can get a good look at that. So that cochlear implant I had in my left ear. This is the one I had in my right ear. So I'll pass it around to you guys so you can look at them. So, the one that Ching-Ting is holding, that's actually a real cochlear implant, that's not a model. The one that Jeremy is holding, it is a model, it's not an actual device. So...so just to start with that, what you're looking at there in the device itself, so can you slide it back over to me? [inaudible] So, we'll just start with the outside parts, which you can see in my hand. So this is my right cochlear implant processor. So it looks like a hearing aid, but it's not a hearing aid, 'cause there's no sound output. The hearing aid just amp- just outputs loudly amplified sound. But I'm totally deaf, so no hearing in the world will help me. So what this does, is this sits on my ear. That's a microphone that takes in sound. This thing here is the processor. This digitizes the sound, converts it into a string of ones and zeros. This is a lithium ion battery that powers the system. So the processor sends the signal to this radio transmitter. So this is actually beaming a signal of about a million bits per second, ones and zeros, a representation of sound. And what it's beaming to is the implant, which is embedded in my skull. And as you can see they stick to each other. That's because there are magnets in both of them. >>So it's magnetic? >>>There's a magnet in here and there's a magnet in here. So these will stick to each other. So this device is counter-sunk in my skull under my skin. So you can't see anything if you look at the side of my head because it's completely encased underneath my-my skin. So this is just sitting there on top of my skull, the headpiece sticks to it, this picks up the radio signal, and it decides which of the electrodes at the end of this wire to stimulate. So if you look very very closely at this you can see sixteen tiny platinum uranium electrodes. And the surgeon snakes these into the inner ear, and they strobe on and off and trigger various parts of the auditory nerve and recreate a sensation of sound. So this all together is a complete cochlear implant, the internal and the external components. So, there are two things here. So this is the one I got in 2001, this is the one I got in 2008. The electronics are actually identical. What's different is that this one is not MRI compatible. 'Cause I have this in my head I can't have an MRI. There's a magnet in there, there's no way to get the magnet out. This device has identical electronics, but, the magnet is removable. So the surgeon can make a small incision in the skin, remove the magnet, the patient can then go in the MRI chamber, then after the MRI, the surgeon just puts it right back in, takes a few seconds, and then st- you know, does a few stitches and that's it. So this is the antenna that picks up the radio signal. That is where the processing electronics are, and just as with the other device it terminates in a string with sixteen electrodes at the end. So that's the hardware itself. So you ask me how aware I am of the hardware, and I'll pass it back to you so you can actually look at it a little more. So, one thing, I can't actually feel the wires inside my inner ear. I can feel the implant itself. You know, there's a slight bump in my skull where I can feel the curve of the implant itself, which is a very slight kind of thing. And the headpiece, it sticks, I mean as you can see it sticks strongly enough to actually stick to my head. Stupid implant tricks. But it's a very soft pressure, it doesn't abrade my skin, it's not that it clomps on and actually hurts or anything. So when I put it on, I feel sort of rushing, electronic sort of sound as the device boots itself up and begins sending electrical signals to my ears.