> could be a treatment for genetic deafness in adults
But would they want such a treatment? What is it like to hear, when you have never heard before? From what I understand, the restoration (storation?) of a sense, to an adult who has never had that sense, is often an extremely unpleasant experience. Disorienting, frightening, dizzying, painful. The brain adapted and rewired itself around not having that sense. Children have remarkable neural plasticity here, but adults don't as much. In deaf people, the auditory cortex is adapted to spatial navigation and vision, not sound. In the case of hearing restored by other means (surgery, cochlear implants, etc.) in adults who were born deaf, it can take many years to learn how to interpret what is being experienced in a useful way, and many give up long before that.
Not to be a downer or anything, on its own this is still an amazing technology.
That's just one use case. On the other hand I can tell you from personal experience no hearing aid I've tried so far can replace natural hearing. It can augment the frequencies you're less able to hear, but for some reason being able to hear them naturally vs via amplification works far better. And hearing loss is also a byproduct of aging, so there are far more people out there who'd like to regain their hearing than adults who might decide on this treatment vs a cochlear implant.
Deafness does not mean being entirely deaf. It can simply be hard of hearing. For example, I have sensorineural hearing loss that is likely genetic and at any rate is congenital. I can hear, just not well, at least without my hearing aids.
To add one anecdote, this seems to be hard even for children. One of the kids in my family had a second adenotomy (first one grew back), and to improve hearing longer term, they also inserted a tympanostomy tube. Hearing did improve a lot, but the kid had regular meltdowns in the months afterwards. He described it as a loud noise that is constantly screaming directly into his head.
Eventually, things calmed down, and things are good now. His parents still aren’t sure it was a good idea because his other ear worked fine mostly, and the docs said his speech development was excellent anyway.
I don't think "genetic deafness" means congenital deafness. Just like blindness, deafness for which you have genetic predisposition can be developed with age.
Although gene therapy can treat genetic hearing loss in neonatal mice, treating adult animals is harder because of the location of the cochleae and the risk of damage to inner ear structures.
> could be a treatment for genetic deafness in adults
But would they want such a treatment? What is it like to hear, when you have never heard before? From what I understand, the restoration (storation?) of a sense, to an adult who has never had that sense, is often an extremely unpleasant experience. Disorienting, frightening, dizzying, painful. The brain adapted and rewired itself around not having that sense. Children have remarkable neural plasticity here, but adults don't as much. In deaf people, the auditory cortex is adapted to spatial navigation and vision, not sound. In the case of hearing restored by other means (surgery, cochlear implants, etc.) in adults who were born deaf, it can take many years to learn how to interpret what is being experienced in a useful way, and many give up long before that.
Not to be a downer or anything, on its own this is still an amazing technology.