Will it ever be possible to give a congenitally-deaf individual the ability to hear?

[ian.vitro]

Forgot another important point about the plasticity deal - no
plasticity would mean that there would be no way for the brains of the
patient to adapt to the cochlear nerve substitute and therefore "learn"
to perceive auditory stimuli. It would be self-defeating. I'm not sure
that there would be any way whatsoever to be able to give hearing to an
adult congenitally deaf individual. Keep in mind we're not talking
about restoring hearing to someone, we're talking about starting from
scratch and giving someone hearing for the first time, well after the
brain has passed the developmental stage where it "learns" to use the
sensory nerves that carry information into it. Simply not sure that
there's any way to manage it.

I don't care for many of Rush's opinions, but it sucks for anybody to
go suddenly deaf, no matter what the reason.

Ian Vitro

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

one out of seven who serve in the military ever see combat, but many die
from accidents and never saw a battlefield.--

Hey Terrell,
I have a brother in Central Florida who worked at Da Nang as an aircraft
mechanic. Is that considered seeing a battlefield by the narrow minds you
have to put up with? He had to go into a trench beside the planes during
attacks by the VC, but finally decided that if a bullet hit the fully loaded
jet he was lying beside, he'd be in little pieces anyway, so he kept
working. His girlfriend in town was killed by a mortar from the loving
freedom fighters of Ho Chi Minh, who targeted civilians because they didn't
shoot back. Like al Qaeda does today.

According to some of the idiots, if you didn't come home in a body
bag you weren't a Veteran, and you took your pay under false pretenses.
I'd like to round some of them up, give them one old pair of fatigues, a
worn out M16, and a one way pane ticket to Iraq. When they arrive, you
give them two loaded clips for the M16, and a weeks MREs and tell them
that they have to earn the trip home.

As far as your brother goes, he did have a dangerous job, but you
don't have to be near a battle to be too close to a JP4 fire. Some
moron ran a stop sign at the entrance of Cairn Airfield in 1973 and
slammed into a tanker full of jet aircraft fuel. It blew up, burn the
truck and the driver. The moron that cause the accident was in the base
hospital with a broken leg. I was five miles away, and felt the shock
wave. It burnt though the asphalt highway, and all that was left of the
truck was the back end of the tank, and part of one axle from the cab.

My MOS was broadcast engineer. The station I was to be sent to in
Vietnam was over run a few months later and the whole staff was killed.
It was miles from the nearest fighting. At the time, I was in Alaska at
the US Army cold weather test site working for AFRTS at one of the
coldest spots on earth. If you fell and couldn't get back on your feet,
you could easily freeze to death within 15 minutes. A number of
soldiers told me that they preferred the battlefield to their time at Ft
Greely.


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida