Cochlear implants are medical devices which have been used several years for the deaf.
But now implant centers nationwide are offering these implants to adults with severe hearing loss. Jan Larky, coordinator of a University of California, San Francisco-based implant center, describes who's eligible. But for the most part the speech that they hear is not very crisp or clear even with the best hearing aids. Cochlear implant chips are surgically embedded behind the ears and provide an electric signal through an external, pager-like apparatus. For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.