At age 3, Angelica Lopez is helping to break a sound barrier for deaf children.
Born without working auditory nerves, she can detect sounds for the first time — and start to mimic them — after undergoing brain surgery to implant a device that bypasses missing wiring in her inner ears.
Angelica is one of a small number of U.S. children who are testing what’s called an auditory brainstem implant, or ABI. The device goes beyond cochlear implants that have brought hearing to many deaf children but that don’t work for tots who lack their hearing nerve.
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In skilled hands, complications appear rare, said Robert Shannon, a USC professor of otolaryngology who helped develop the device. Post-surgery, stimulator complications can include non-auditory sensations such as tingling of the face or throat.
Next questions include who are the best candidates, and what benefit to expect — if children really will develop speech as well as with cochlear implants, and hear well enough to talk on a phone. Scientists know far more about how to stimulate the inner ear than the brain directly, Shannon noted.
“What we’re giving to these kids is something very different than what any normal system would be getting,” he explained. To untangle that scrambled pattern, “the brain is picking up the slack. It’s covering our tracks.”
