Researchers are working on a prototype of a mouth retainer that would send electrical pulses corresponding to specific words and sounds to the tongue, helping the hearing impaired feel words when they can’t hear them.
For the hearing challenged, an experimental mouthpiece could help turn inaudible sounds into electrical words “heard” by the tongue.
Researchers at Colorado State University have developed retainer prototypes aimed with that functionality.
The concept is an earpiece and retainer system that can detect sounds and translate them into word-specific waveforms using an internal processor. A Bluetooth connection sends the waveforms to the retainer, which in turn electrically stimulates designated nerves on the tongue. Over time, the brain learns to differentiate and remember the patterns that represent words spoken in real time.
This process is similar to the way the brains of blind people translate Braille bumps into letters and words.
The tongue was chosen as a target
