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11/16/09
11/16/09
11/16/09
And then, one September, they let AOLers on to Usenet...
11/15/09
"A majority of deaf children are born to hearing parents, many who would sooner opt for insurance-covered implants for their kids than years of sign education, audiologist visits and hearing aids, which are pricey and usually are not covered by medical insurance."
Actually, CIs require just as many audiology and speech therapy visits, if not more. It's an ongoing therapeutic and intervention process to make a deaf child hear with a CI, and it is in no way automatic. You're right about hearing aids, however, not being covered by insurance (which is just wrong but we haven't really come to expect any better from those guys, have we?).
11/15/09
11/15/09
Having said that I think that if we reach the point that it starts enhancing humans people will grasp on to it. Why carry around a cellphone when you can just talk to someone with your thoughts. Computer interface would get moved forward so fast that the next generation would look at our current most advanced interfaces and say WTF.
Neurotechnology will result in the human race reaching the Singularity point instead of having passing on our existence to pure machines.
Cybernetics, in which ever form it may come, is the next step in human evolution. #deaf
11/15/09
To people who are going "Why wouldn't people do this, why fight being able to hear?" There are a few reasons for this.
1.) Deaf communities are very supportive of their members and doing something to step outside the community is akin to saying you no longer want to be part of the community at all. There are many deaf colleges and schools around the world where you have to be deaf to attend that place, this could be more then a hear or not hear, but also learn or not learn.
2.) Getting a CI is a VERY hard choice, not only is it 100% irreversible its also life threatening.
Would you chose to use your cellphone if it had the risk that you would never be able to move again after you use it?
Sadly many public schools in the world do not teach any form of sign language, so people with hearing disabilities tend to live in communities with other deaf people so they can communicate with other people, CI's offer these people a chance to communicate with everyone else, at the cost of alienating their long time friends. A CI is a last resort device, its when you absolutely have no other way of communicating with people. #deaf
11/15/09
11/15/09
11/15/09
Its important to realize that cochlear implants are different from hearing aids in that the individuals receiving them have never heard sounds before. As a result, their brain has not "learned" how to interpret sounds and their meanings. I remember from one of my neuroscience courses in medical school that when a part of the brain is underutilized during development, it will eventually take upon another role. In other words, the auditory cortex of a deaf person, while equivalent in size to a "normal" person during the womb stages, slowly decreases in size as the neurons fail to get activated after birth. It isn't that the auditory cortex disappears, but rather other sensory cortices (tactile, visual, olfactory) start using up the neurons. Therefore, when a cochlear implant is introduced, which part of the brain is now equipped to handle this new stimuli?
I, myself, am hearing impaired since birth (profound-severe downward sloping hearing loss) but utilize hearing aids to get by. While they do amplify sounds, I still struggle with loud environments and rely heavily on lip-reading. I remember a time when I thought cochlear implant would be the best thing that could have happened, but after doing my research, I realized that if I were to get it, I would have to "re-learn" language as sounds would be different, and my brain would need time (possibly years) to readjust to these new sounds before being able to interpret them into language.
As an interesting tidbit, I once had a patient during my psychiatric emergency rotation (I am a psychiatric resident...yes i realize the irony - a hard-of-hearing individual practicing a branch of medicine which involves heavily upon listening - but if anything it has made me focus more on the patient talking as I want to ensure I hear everything). Anyway, the patient was deaf, but was experiencing a psychotic depression in which she claimed she was hearing voices. I thought it was fascinating as she had never experienced sound, yet she stated that she was hearing people laughing at her. It would have been interesting to have done a SPECT scan on her to determine which part of the brain may have been lighting up during these episodes.
Sorry for the long post. Just wanted to share some information on a topic that hits close to home. #deaf
11/15/09
11/16/09
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11/15/09
If technology were to ever progress that far, I'd think that humans would sort of mesh together into a giant mind-blob... thing, with thoughts and emotions propogating and stewing throughout all the connected people.
Also, lolcats would be EVERYWHERE. #deaf
11/15/09
11/15/09
Unless it was stock or bought. #deaf
11/15/09
11/15/09
@32ndnote: Wow, thanks for putting me down.
I didn't see it, I'm not a retard like you. (get it?) #deaf
11/16/09
11/16/09
I'm pretty good at Photoshop, but I take a long time to get things going because I'm a perfectionist... I hate almost all of my work, and the work I still like is riddled with mistakes in my eyes... #deaf
11/15/09
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