With the advancement in science ant technology scientists have successfully been developing different artificial body organs that not only grant vitality to ailing human beings but enable him/her to lead a normal life like a healthy person.
Motivated by the discovery of 1978, which revealed the majority of human ears continuously release extremely pure, soft tones/sounds that can be raised with a sensitive microphone, scientist Andrew Bell is developing an artificial cochlea, a spiral-shaped hollow bone in the inner ear for sensing, processing, and amplifying sounds, with the help of surface acoustic wave (SAW) resonator, a uncomplicated solid-state electronic device usually used in cell phones due to its compatibility.
SAW resonators employ a chain of electrodes to develop signals by generating electromechanical waves between them whose wavelengths correspond to the spacing of the electrodes. The cochlear amplifier will function in a response circuit reconciled by the waves, like a SAW resonator, as well. Response in the cochlea would only entail slow-moving wave, as the hair cells are linked to soft structures.
Bell on his novel advancement asserted,
When you listen to a recording of the sound that the cochlea makes, you hear something like a carillon of wind chimes. It’s easy to get the impression that something seems to be resonating.
The idea is that cells are not lonely, independent entities unaware of other cells. Instead, cells appear in populations and cooperatively interact so as to perform signal processing. We have long known that nerve cells process information via a network of interactions (neural nets), but here we see a preneural example: outer hair cells act both to detect sound and pass it on to neighboring cells, which do the same. Shuttling of signals back and forth leads to positive feedback and frequency analysis, and this might prompt us to look for similar interactions among other sensing cells. Visual, olfactory, and balance cells, for example, could well work in similar ways.
The cochlea possibly will provide sharp resonance frequencies through squirting waves and the SAW configuration, in between 20 and 20,000 Hz, emblematic of the human ear.
Bell’s theory, of outer hair cells in the cochlea actively assist to amplify sound, certainly has an clear edge over the existing premise of a hydrodynamical traveling wave stimulating hair cell stereocilia, as it never can accommodate (easily) such fine-tuning.
Via: physorg
