Cochlear implants work differently from hearing aids. Instead of making sounds louder, they bypass the damaged parts of the inner ear and send signals directly to the brain, allowing individuals to perceive sound more clearly.
To Hear or Not
Cochlear implants were never on our radar, and the topic arose what felt like out of the blue while talking to his audiologist who said hearing aids could no longer improve his ability to better understand speech.
Access Isn’t One Size Fits All
Even within the d/Deaf and hard of hearing umbrella, our access needs and identities vary widely. That in-between space can feel like nowhere—not “hearing enough” for the hearing world, not “Deaf enough” for Deaf spaces.
Personalized Cochlear Implant Care Grounded in Music-Based Benchmarks
Our review published in Brain Sciences in May 2025 proposes a shift in how we may evaluate and provide care to CI users: by adjusting our current speech-focused performance metrics to incorporate music perception, and by integrating personalized medicine into CI.
How I Embraced Hearing Aids (and Advocacy) for Life’s Important Moments
If you’ve been diagnosed with a hearing loss, get more opinions. Tell your audiologist you want the telecoil so that when a venue or house of worship has a hearing loop installed.
Webinar Recap: Birds Show the Way to Hair Cell Regeneration
We can now treat otoferlin-related hearing loss. In the next 10 years, we will continue to reach more groups with specific causes of hearing loss—momentum that will help accelerate the process for everyone.
Can Machine Learning Predict Who Will Benefit Most From Cochlear Implants?
Despite challenges, the potential of machine learning to improve cochlear implant outcomes is clear. By refining models, improving data quality, and addressing ethical concerns, we can move toward a future where CIs are more personalized and effective.
Help America Hear Scholarship
Our friends at Help America Hear want to share that their high school scholarship competition is open for high school seniors with hearing loss using hearing aids, cochlear implants, or bone anchored hearing aids. The essay application is due March 30.
A Push for ‘ADA-Access-Ready’ Hearing Devices
In the United States, assistive listening systems are mandated by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to give people with hearing loss the clarity that is impossible to receive with hearing instruments alone.
The Wonderful World of Hearing
I’d like to share four important breakthroughs in hearing research over the past year, and how each also connects back to Hearing Health Foundation, to varying degrees. These major advances offer hope for how we might improve or restore hearing and, by extension, bring a bit more of that wonderful world into everyone’s lives.