A multiple-electrode hearing prosthesis for cochlea implantation in deaf patients.

A multiple-electrode hearing prosthesis for cochlea implantation in deaf patients has been developed at the University of Melbourne. It has been designed as a multiple-electrode implant to provide the best chance of enabling patients to understand speech. It has been shown that an electrode array can be threaded along the coills of the inner ear close to residual auditory nerves. Experimental studies have indicated that the long-term implantation of the array will not lead to significant degeneration of auditory nerve fibres. Loss of platinum from the stimulating electrodes can be minimized with a biphasic constant current pulse, where the first phase is negative with respect to ground. The receiver-stimulator component has also been designed to provide 10-15 channels of stimulation. Furthermore, the phase and amplitude of the stimuli to individual electrodes can be varied to enable the localization of the electrical fields to discrete groups of nerve fibres, and the correct method of frequency and intensity coding to be determined. Finally, the device should be used in the first instance for a specially selected group of adults who are post-lingually deaf.

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