I have been an otolaryngologist for more than two decades. My patients tell me they want more natural sound, more enjoyment of music, and most of all, better comprehension of speech, particularly in settings with background noise—the so-called cocktail party problem. For 15 years, my team at the University of Göttingen, in Germany, has been collaborating with colleagues at the University of Freiburg and beyond to reinvent the cochlear implant in a strikingly counterintuitive way: using light.
If we used optogenetics to make cochlear nerve cells light sensitive, we could then precisely hit these targets with beams of low-energy light to produce much finer auditory sensations than with the electrical implant…. Sound stimuli could be electronically split up into many more discrete frequency bands, giving users a much richer experience of sound.
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We foresee a future in which beams of light can bring rich soundscapes to people with profound hearing loss or deafness. We hope that the optical cochlear implant will enable them to pick out voices in a busy meeting, appreciate the subtleties of their favorite songs, and take in the full spectrum of sound—from trilling birdsongs to booming bass notes. We think this technology has the potential to illuminate their auditory worlds.
