Khang - How much is it going to cost?

Jeanie - Right now it costs from 35 to 50 thousand dollars for the whole surgery and the follow up stuff. The cost should go down over time as we get better at making electronics and the start to make more implants.

Jeanie - Yes, I know that they have the same problem with retinal implants that they do with colcular implants. If you're deaf your whole life and you get the implants and your blind your whole life, it's hard to understand the signals you receive because you usually learn it as a kid while your brain is still developing. Its like the movie staring Val Kilman where he is blind all his life then suddenly he can see through surgery, but his brain can't understand what he is seeing so much so that he cant tell the difference between a picture and real object. So his brain had to re-learn to understand 3D.

Jeanie- We're not sure if a person can learn the difference between 2D and 3D as an adult. It may be a skill that can only be acquired as a child while your brain is still developing. The same thing happens with deaf people. If they're deaf all their whole life. When they get the implant they can't make sense of a lot of sounds.

Jair - What are you working on now in your field?

Jeanie - Right now I'm trying to find an algorithm for hearing aids that will make the sounds clearer. Right now when you get a hearing aid it pretty much just cranks up the volume, and that dosen't make a lot of sense because something that a lot of people don't know is that the volume that hurts a normal hearing persons ears is the same volume that hurts a hearing impaired person's ears. So I'm trying to make hearing aids clearer not louder. The way I'm trying to do this is that I'm training people to talk in a really clear way that helps deaf people understand them. Then I'm going to try to synthesize that style of speech. I'm working on something that will allow you to talk in a normal way and the hearing aid will distort it in a way that deaf people can understand it.

Khang - How accurate do the hearing aids people use now work?

Jeanie - There are a couple of different kinds. Usually you wear an ear mold that stomps up your ear basically and then outside the ear hole is a microphone. Then the microphone justs cranks up the volume and blasts it into you ear.

Jeanie - The hearing aid I'm working on just changes the persons style of speech .

Jeanie - I don't think I mentioned this but one of the things we're working on is a quad speech program where you're talking on a computer and a deaf person will be able to understand you because when your talking a computerized hand on the screen will mimic your speed with sigh language onto your computer screen.

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