treadair (USA) Humming heads Zoe, as you might have guessed, was the dog. Never letting a weird thought go to waste, here's a suggestion on how we could turn that condition into something useful. People who have had a severe spinal injury can enter what is called a 'locked-in state', meaning they are so paralyzed that there's no way for them to communicate with the outside world. If a cochlear implant was designed so that it could create these otoacoustic emissions on demand then it might give these patients a way to communicate. With a little biofeedback training they could vary the sound waves that are being emitted and establish a new form of communication. |