Andreas is a young boy who was born deaf. Since he has no auditory nerves, he could
not benefit from a cochlear implant (CI). A CI is surgically placed in the cochlea
and sends electrical currents to surrounding auditory nerve fibers to elicit hearing
sensations. When Andreas was three years old, he received an auditory brainstem implant
(ABI) [
[1]
]. The ABI is similar to a CI but consists of an electrode array that is placed on
the surface of the auditory portion of the brainstem. Today, Andreas is 10 years old
and can understand speech well enough to attend school with his normal hearing peers.
He is even starting to learn to play the guitar. This remarkable case is one of many
that show how electrical stimulation of the brain can restore function. Like many
innovations, however, the ABI was met with skepticism and low expectations during
its development. There were doubts that the complicated circuitry of the brainstem
could be artificially stimulated to restore useful hearing and whether the ABI would
be successful in children. Since 1979, visionaries such as William House, William
Hitselberger, Douglas McCreery and Vittorio Colletti, pushed forward through these
hurdles [
2
,
3
,
4
]. It is now clear that we underestimated the ability of the brain to adapt to a highly
non-normal pattern of neural activation from an ABI [
5
,
6
]. More than 1200 deaf people, including children as young as one year, have been implanted
with the ABI. Many are able to understand speech and talk on the telephone.To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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Article Info
Publication History
Published online: October 29, 2014
Accepted:
October 23,
2014
Received in revised form:
October 23,
2014
Received:
October 17,
2014
Identification
Copyright
© 2015 Elsevier Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
