Beyond gene therapy, restoring hearing and amplifying sound is emerging as an exciting innovation space, thought to be driven by the growing population of older people, with a range of novel technologies under development. Raymond L Goldsworthy, and colleagues, at the Bionic Ear Lab at the University of Southern California, have developed sound-processing algorithms that could be used with smart glasses to enhance hearing for both cochlear implant and hearing aid users. "Microphones embedded on the legs of eyeglasses and connected to a hearing device could help someone better pick up the acoustic environment to create more or less super hearing - they could hear out into the world, not unlike a spider does, which uses its web in a hearing sort of way," Goldsworthy explains.
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