Optogenetic cochlea implants to treat hearing loss

In a Nature Communications paper, scientists at Max Planck Institute of Biophysics and colleagues suggested that optogenetic cochlear implants that use a light-stimulated ion channel engineered with increased neural photoactivation could help treat hearing loss.

Electrical cochlea implants have technical limitations that can reduce the intensity and frequency resolution when converting sound to neural signals, leading to impairment in speech comprehension...