Cochlear implant
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A cochlear implant (CI) is an electronic device that is inserted by surgery into a part of the ear called cochlea. Persons who are having difficulty in hearing or are completely deaf use the device to help them hear better. Not all parts of the cochlear implants are inside the ear. They have a microphone and some electronics that are usually placed behind the ear. These electronics send signals to the device implanted in the ear to make hearing possible.
When someone's inner ear hair cells are damages, the conversion of sound vibrations to electrical signals sent to the brain for interpretation gets damaged. Cochlear implants fix this problem by having a microphone of sorts and a speech processor outside of the ear that helps capturing sounds and then processing them. Once the sounds are processed, they are transmitted to something called an internal receiver implanted within the skull on someone that has had the operation for a cochlear implant. The receiver sends signals to electrodes that are manually placed within the cochlea which is the snail-like part in the inner ear. The electrodes stimulate the auditory nerve fibers then send signals to the brain to translate the electrodes into sound.
Most cochlear implants have the following parts. They are divided into external parts which can be seen outside and internal parts which are implanted: