The Australian scientist who pioneered the development of cochlear implants 30 years ago is now working on a hi-fi version, to be available in as little as five years.
A next generation implant would not only allow deaf people to hear noise and recognise speech, says Professor Graeme Clark, it would introduce nuance to sound, flesh-out tone and improve on clarity.
"The best way to describe it is if someone is hearing speech now with a good cochlear implant...he would hear speech as though someone had a very hoarse, raspy voice," Mr Clark told AAP.
"You’d still understand what was said but if you hear music through a speech processor...Beethoven’s Fifth, as an example, would sound terrible."
"The other problem is if you’re in a noisy surrounding...one of these restaurants with bad acoustics, you will not be able to latch on to the finer aspects of speech."
A cochlear implant works by bypassing a hearing-impaired person’s non-functioning inner-ear as electrical impulses are sent in patterns - interpreted by the brain as sound - straight to the hearing nerves.
There are 10,000 to 20,000 of these nerves and improving on the current technology means finding new ways to independently stimulate them in smaller and smaller portions.
Fantastically miniature carbon nanotubes will play a role in the new technology, Mr Clark said, adding the work was now underway.
"It’s likely, given adequate resources, five years," he said of the expected time-frame.
"The crucial thing was to get speech understanding...we’ve climbed Mt Everest, which people said was impossible, but once getting up to there K2 is still in the distance".
"I would really hope that we can make sufficient progress within five years to give people good quality (sound)."
His comments came as it was announced Mr Clark would take on the role of distinguished professor at Melbourne’s La Trobe University, to head up its new Graeme Clark Hearing and Neuroscience Unit aided by leading auditory neuroscientist Associate Professor Tony Paolini.
The creation of the unit also marks the 30th anniversary of Mr Clark’s implant breakthrough, which came just before Christmas in 1978.
His was the first cochlear implant to reliably give speech understanding to severely to profoundly deaf people, leading to spoken language for children born deaf.
Over the past twenty years, more than 120,000 cochlear implants have been performed in 100 countries - 70 per cent utilising the device developed by Mr Clark in Australia.
These people could now sing along to a pop song, Mr Clark said, but with anticipated improvements it was hoped future recipients could aspire to loftier goals.
"What you might see is them singing Handel’s Messiah opera...or better still, a leading violinist. Now that would be something, he said.
"It’s becoming more the realms of possibility.
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