Ears and Years

We attended the University of Texas Chancellor's Council meeting here in Dallas last weekend.

They presented a fascinating program at UT Dallas (the UT system has nine academic campuses and six medical ones) - showing off the latest in nanotechnology, brain studies and art. Their interdiscipilnary coordination between the science and art departments boggle the less-than-young mind.

Then we reconvened at UT Southwestern Medical School and heard about the coordinaton between Callier Center for Communication (used to be just speech and hearing challenges), UT Dallas Engineering school and UT Southwestern Medical. They are doing ground-breaking work on deafness and cochlear implantation.

Did you know:
Hearing aids supply amplification; cochlear implants electically replace the tiny hairs in the inner ear which transmit impulses to the brain which allow you to hear.

They can do a cochlear implant in childen as young as 6 months.

A cochlear implant never (so far - they've been being implanted for the last 20 or so years) needs to be replaced as the inner ear is adult size at birth.

Children can't learn to speak if they can't hear.

Getting a cochlear implant can result in loss of any residual hearing.

Studies show that background noise can sometimes be eliminated with two implants.

Technology is coming up with new systems to deliver sounds to the deaf - future systems may include hardware that looks and acts a like PDA.

In more news, we are having our 45th high school reunion and about a fourth of our class of 97 will attend. I expect lots of laughing over old pictures and oohs and ahhs over the photos of the grandchildren - some of whom are in their 40s. In our old days, people didn't wait until their late 30s to marry and have children. Some of our classmates married at 18 or 19 and had children right away - AND some are even still married to their original spouse! What a concept!