Why Hearing Aids Fail and How to Solve This

Hearing is one of the human’s foremost sensors; being able to hear again after suffering from a hearing loss is a great achievement, under all circumstances. However, in the long run, users of present-day hearing aids and cochlear implants are generally only halfway satisfied with what the commercial side offers. We demonstrate here that this is due to the failure of a full integration of these devices into the human physiological circuitry. Important parts of the hearing network that remain unestablished are the efferent connections to the cochlea, which strongly affects the faculty of listening. The latter provides the base for coping with the so-called cocktail party problem, or for a full enjoyment of multi-instrumental musical plays. While nature clearly points at how this could be remedied, to achieve this technologically will require the use of advanced high-precision electrodes and high-precision surgery, as we outline here. Corresponding efforts must be pushed forward by coordinated efforts from the side of science, as the commercial players in the field of hearing aids cannot be expected to have a substantial interest in advancements into this direction.