(I had a cochlear implant "installed" into my skull on June 17. Since then, I've been offering periodic updates on my progress.)
Since last Friday, when I received the transmitter for my cochlear implant, I have begun to hear the world in a whole new way. It’s still disorienting to hear so much: as I’m typing this, I am hyper aware of every keystroke clicking in my right ear and pinging in my left. My brain is still struggling to integrate the two streams of information, a process that will take up to six months. Every day or two, I increase the volume and make it possible to recognize more sounds on my left side. To improve my brain’s capacity to make sense of this rush of noise, I am “listening” to NPR through my phone directly into the transmitter. At this point, I pick up a word here or there: “pandemic,” “support for NPR,” “Boris Johnson” (three times in one morning), “professor” amid the general flow of gibberish. More satisfying is reading a book while listening to it (again through my phone) so my brain can use my eyes to help me “hear” the words properly. I am so grateful to be undergoing this process of rehabilitation--there are so many blessings in the technology itself, but also in the brain’s plasticity.
Fun fact: In 1890, the great psychologist William James was the first to suggest the hypothesis of plasticity, namely that the brain (as well as other parts of the body) has the capacity to grow and change over the course of a person’s lifetime: “Organic matter, especially nervous tissue, seems endowed with a very extraordinary degree of plasticity.”
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