Are CI's Helpful?

Do cochlear implants actually help? A lot of parents who have deaf kids or people who are deaf wonder this. Parents of deaf kids want the best for their kids and want them to "fit in". The cochlear implant can be thought of as helpful, but also not as helpful, because nothing can really replace hearing.

They are a great invention, but are they really helping people hear? People who are deaf wonder this. The answer is actually no. They send electrical signals to your brain, mimicking hearing, but not actually allowing the person to hear.

The cochlear implants also do not actually help with tone because the voice a person “hears” is a robotic voice without much tone. Deaf people will not be able to hear and talk exactly how hearing people do, even with the latest cochlear implants.

Older generations also think the cochlear implant is ruining their culture. They feel that the cochlear implants is making it so that the people who are getting them will not learn the ASL language. They feel that brings them together as a community and connects them.

They can be helpful in a sense, but I am not sure that everyone would agree. This would be very helpful to anyone who is deaf and thinking about getting a cochlear implant because they obviously want to know if it will help them or not.

On MTV’s show Made it showed that most people that get cochlear implants later in life end up taking them out all the time because a lot of the noise they were hearing was making them go crazy, what we think of as background noise they hear and pay attention to, so it is very annoying to them. That I would think would be very annoying, especially if I was used to complete silence.  The brain hears things and will see if it is threatening, if we hear it all the time, and it brings no danger to us, the brain does not hear it anymore. Deaf people who get cochlear implants do not have that luxury at first, their brain is bombarded with new sounds and signals which sends them into overload. This is why I am not sure if they are helpful or not.