The cochlear implant (bionic ear) is a device that bypasses a nonfunctional inner ear and stimulates the hearing nerves with patterns of electrical currents so that speech and sounds can be perceived by profoundly deaf people. The bionic ear is the culmination of investigations that started more than two hundred years ago, and it is the first major advance in helping profoundly deaf to communicate since the sign language of the deaf was developed by l?Abbe´ de l Epe´e at the Paris Deaf School in second half of eighteenth century. The cochlear implant is to date the only direct interface to the central nervous system to restore sensory function. The cochlear implant has been the result of research in many disciplines, including surgical anatomy, surgical pathology, biology, biophysics, neurophysiology, psychophysics, speech science, engineering, surgery, audiology, rehabilitation, and education. The function of cochlear implant is today well known but, its early development through the history of electrical stimulation of the ear is uncertain. The Count Alessandro Volta is generally qualified as the first to stimulate the ear with the electricity. Alessandro Volta, soon after developing the battery, carried out on himself in the late 1790s the first experiment on electrical stimulation of the auditory nerve. His results were read on June 26, 1800, before the Royal Society meeting in London. The report is recorded in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London for the year 1800, part I, p. 427. Because of the unpleasant sensation experienced by the scientist, any other experiment was carried out over the next half century to study this effect. Investigating exhaustively the available literature of the eighteenth century, we found an electrical stimulation of the ear carried out, half century before Volta. The results of this investigation is reported.

ELECTRICAL STIMULATION OF THE EAR: A LONG HISTORY STARTING INTHE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

MARTINI, ALESSANDRO;
2011

Abstract

The cochlear implant (bionic ear) is a device that bypasses a nonfunctional inner ear and stimulates the hearing nerves with patterns of electrical currents so that speech and sounds can be perceived by profoundly deaf people. The bionic ear is the culmination of investigations that started more than two hundred years ago, and it is the first major advance in helping profoundly deaf to communicate since the sign language of the deaf was developed by l?Abbe´ de l Epe´e at the Paris Deaf School in second half of eighteenth century. The cochlear implant is to date the only direct interface to the central nervous system to restore sensory function. The cochlear implant has been the result of research in many disciplines, including surgical anatomy, surgical pathology, biology, biophysics, neurophysiology, psychophysics, speech science, engineering, surgery, audiology, rehabilitation, and education. The function of cochlear implant is today well known but, its early development through the history of electrical stimulation of the ear is uncertain. The Count Alessandro Volta is generally qualified as the first to stimulate the ear with the electricity. Alessandro Volta, soon after developing the battery, carried out on himself in the late 1790s the first experiment on electrical stimulation of the auditory nerve. His results were read on June 26, 1800, before the Royal Society meeting in London. The report is recorded in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London for the year 1800, part I, p. 427. Because of the unpleasant sensation experienced by the scientist, any other experiment was carried out over the next half century to study this effect. Investigating exhaustively the available literature of the eighteenth century, we found an electrical stimulation of the ear carried out, half century before Volta. The results of this investigation is reported.
2011
The 48th Inner Ear Biology Workshop
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11577/2483916
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