Caiden Moran was born with a hearing impairment that made him deaf until he reached the age of five years old. The lucky boy can now hear his family for the first time because of an innovative device designed by American scientists. The only difference you would notice on Caiden is a small device on the side of his head.
According to his mother Danielle Moran, at birth Caiden was profoundly deaf, with no inner part of the ear that has the role to convert sounds to nerve impulses and send them to the brain. The part of the inner ear responsible for this function is called cochleas. Before to be released from the hospital where he was born doctors confirmed that baby Caiden was deaf.
In the case of Caiden, since the boy had no cochleas, a cochlear implant couldn't be of any help. His parents had to learn sign language in order to communicate with their son. At the time, his family has assumed that this will be forever the only way to communicate with Caiden. But by chance, his mother, Danielle, heard about a possible solution.
An auditory brainstem implant (ABI) consists of a microphone and transmitter on the head. The microphone has the role in converting sounds from the outside world into electrical signals that are transmitted further to an internal receiver made up of electrodes. The electrodes are usually implanted on the brainstem in order to bypass the inner ear completely and directly stimulate the auditory neurons in the brain.
According to Dr. Mark Krieger, a pediatric neurosurgeon at Children's Hospital, Los Angeles, an ABI device can be considered as a "bionic ear." He added that the brain can be used the way it's designed to work by putting the electrodes directly into the hearing centers. In a very young child, the brain itself is able to develop around the implant.
USC's Keck School of Medicine in conjunction with the Children's Hospital in Los Angeles started a clinical trial in 2014 with the aim to perform auditory brainstem implants on young children. Previously, this procedure was performed by surgeons in Italy for more than 10 years. However, this trial is the only one available for children aged two to five and the only one FDA-approved one in the U.S.
Caiden underwent brain surgery to implant the device in January 2015, as part of the clinical trial. Dr. Eric Wilkinson, one of the three surgeons who performed Caiden's operation, declared that the medical community already knows from cochlear implant studies that it is best to stimulate the auditory system and the brain earlier for achieving the best results. Caiden's operation was a success, but since he spent his entire childhood without any auditory input, it will still take years to train his brain to understand and interpret sounds.
