How does a cochlear implant treat deafness?

  Cochlear implantation is the only method currently used in clinical treatment of bilateral severe or profound sensorineural deafness. The clinical application of cochlear implants has enabled deaf patients to return to the world of sound, and after speech training most profoundly deaf patients (deaf patients) regain the ability to speak and communicate with each other.  In recent years, with the development of modern high technology, cochlear implant technology has progressed rapidly from single-channel cochlear implants, which could only help patients with lip reading, to modern multi-channel programmed cochlear implants, which can enable most patients to make phone calls. Many deaf children with cochlear implants can enter normal schools after one to two years of auditory language rehabilitation training; adults who are already able to speak can regain a high degree of auditory oral communication ability without rehabilitation after cochlear implantation when deafness occurs (postlingual deafness).  In normal people, the hair cells in the inner ear convert sound signals into bioelectrical signals that are transmitted to the auditory nerve and analyzed by the auditory center of the brain to produce hearing. 80% or more of severe or profound deafness is caused by damage to the hair cells in the cochlea.  The cochlear implant works by converting speech and sound signals into electrical signals (replacing the function of the damaged hair cells) and directly stimulating the auditory nerve so that the patient can regain auditory function.  The cochlear implant device consists of an external device and an internal implant device. The external device collects the speech signal and converts it into an electrical signal, which is digitized and coded according to a specific speech processing strategy and transmitted to the internal implant device through a wireless transmitter coil located behind the ear. After the signal is received by the receiving coil of the in vivo implant, it is decoded by a decoder chip, which causes the electrode array implanted in the cochlea to generate an electric current with sound characteristics and directly stimulates the auditory nerve to produce hearing.