I’ve Got Something in My Ear
You're not supposed to put your digits into your ear, and now you may not want to have an all-digital hearing aid as well. New analog technologies inspired by biology sound good and use much less power.

Some people with severe hearing loss can have their hearing restored using cochlear implants. Electrodes are embedded into the cochlea, but most of the rest of the device (a microphone for picking up sounds, a processor for converting sound into electronic signals, and batteries for powering it all) sits outside the ear.

According to a May 29, 2003 article in the New York Times, Prof. Rahul Sarpeshkar of MIT has been developing an ear implant that won't conk out quickly, or can use smaller, less unwieldy batteries. His insight -- for all the benefits of using digital processing chips, the amount of computing they have to do to create sounds requires a lot of power.

Sarpeshkar is part of MIT’s Analog VLSI and Biological Systems Group, which explores "biologically inspired electronics." Their solution to the power problem is to take what might appear to be a backwards step in technology -- an analog sound processing chip. However, their careful engineering makes an analog ear implant superior, because it can deliver the same sound quality using only one-tenth the power.

Commercial versions of Sarpeshkar's analog chip should be available to manufacturers in about 2 years.

This work suggests the possibility of someday being able to implant the entire device, or creating entire MP3 players that fit into an earbud.

Visit Prof. Sarpeshkar at MIT, and learn more about the low power ear

Read the complete May 29, 2003 New York Times article which covers this development

Read a 1998 tutorial about cochlear implants from the Univ. of Texas-Dallas implant lab

Visit Hear this Organization, which provides information about hearing loss and implants