A team of researchers from Colorado State University are attempting to develop a device which will enable deaf people to ‘hear’ merely by touching their tongue against a portable Bluetooth-enabled gadget.
After a year of testing prototypes, the researchers have now filed a provisional patent and established a start-up company to bring the product to market.
The mouthpiece system operates in a similar way to cochlear implants which, although hugely successful in helping deaf people, have faced criticism from some. Deemed as unsuitable for a number of deaf people, the surgery is also invasive and expensive.
It was whilst reading up on the implants that researcher John Williams made the decision to create a more up-to-date, less invasive device of his own. Cochlear implants gather sound from outside of the body, before converting it into an electrical signal. The sound is then transmitted directly to the auditory nerve. This new mouthpiece system works in a very similar way; audio is taken from an earpiece microphone and sent to a mouthpiece via Bluetooth, instead transmitting the signal to the large number of sensitive nerves in the tongue.
Williams, an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, said: “It’s much simpler than undergoing surgery and we think it will be a lot less expensive than cochlear implants.
“What we are trying to do is another form of sensory substitution.
“Cochlear implants are very effective and have transformed many lives, but not everyone is a candidate. We think our device will be just as effective but will work for many more people and cost less.”
The user of the device will need some practice to correctly interpret the signals that are sent as sound to the tongue, however Leslie Stone-Roy, assistant professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, believes that this new technique can be achieved with a couple of month’s practice.
“We have a remarkable amount of plasticity in our brain even as adults,” she said. “We now know that is able to make changes and adapt to changes in incoming information, especially stimuli that are of importance to the individual.”
The current prototype is quite a large device, however researchers are confident that, eventually, it will be possible to build it into a much smaller unit, worn discreetly in the mouth.