Between historical explanations of Ukraine and Russias relationship, I came across chilling, though thinly sourced, reports that the invading Russian Army would be followed by mobile crematoriums. Then, people all over the world could begin to hear the light. Profoundly hearing-impaired people benefit more from cochlear implants, which, as mentioned above, skip over dysfunctional or lost hair cells and directly stimulate the cochlear, or auditory, nerve. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. The journalist Hussein Kesvani described online response to these first days of the war in Ukraine as memeification, the marvel-isation, the spectacle of an ongoing war rendered as entertainment. Theres nothing inherently wrong with creating heroesCasablanca was made in the midst of the Second World War, an homage to the righteousness of the Allied cause in the face of Fascism. But each electrical pulse spreads out and stimulates off-target nerve cells, which results in muddier sound. Hearing can be partially restored by hearing aids, which essentially provide an amplified version of the sound to the remaining sensory hair cells of the cochlea. The so-called disso queen, whose former clients range from Kim Kardashian to Johnny Depp, reflects on the state of our unions. Have the international sanctions begun affecting your IEEE section, or your professional situation? We are so deluged by information about the situation on the ground, from every angle, that some have called this the TikTok War. Are we bearing witness or simply watching things in a faraway place go boom? Paul Kolbe, It gets worse before it gets better in Ukraine Since then, optogenetics has become a significant tool in neuroscience research, and clinicians are experimenting with medical applications including vision restoration and cardiac pacing. I mean, there has to be another explanation of what we see in Ukraine today and why this terrible battle is considered as something inevitable. Our idea was exciting, but my collaborators and I saw a host of challenges. Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship, US-Russia Initiative to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism, Slavic and Eurasian Studies at Harvard: Library and Archival Resources, https://www.facebook.com/harvardkennedyschool/, https://www.linkedin.com/school/harvard-kennedy-school-of-government/, https://www.youtube.com/user/HarvardKennedySchool, http://instagram.com/harvardkennedyschool/. Have there been any discussions among members of your section with regard to the situation in Ukraine? Theres a popular misconception that cochlear implants restore natural hearing. Natasha Yefimova-Trilling, Ukraine war prompts surprising unity in Europe on need for bolstered defense It typically has between 12 and 24 electrodes that are inserted into the cochlea to directly stimulate the nerve at different points. first results of our engineering experiments with Chrimson were fast Chrimson (f-Chrimson) and very fast Chrimson (vf-Chrimson). I cant imagine that our country can be an aggressor. Weve already begun gathering data about the stability of the optogenetically altered cells and whether theyll need repeated injections of the channelrhodopsin genes to stay responsive to light. And it is perhaps as close as we get to empathy across borders and through the fog of an unfolding war. Todays cochlear implants are the most successful neuroprosthetic to date. There is a never-ending supply of man-on-the-street interviews, podcasts produced in the dead of nightunder the spectre of deathand TV broadcasts filled with dire B-roll. 466 million people worldwide suffer from disabling hearing loss that requires intervention, according to the World Health Organization. We were excited when a leader in optogenetics, Its a dead Russian soldier lying on the ground, covered in snow, abandoned, and a six-year-old dying in front of her mother. Megan Greene, Will China's support for Russia hold as condemnation over Ukraine grows? For the latest on civilian casualties in Ukraine, see UN Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights. Money doesn't matter. We found micro-LEDs useful because theyre a very mature commercial technology with good power efficiency. We see some facts, which look quite realistic, followed by numerous very questionable interpretations. Some There are many veterans of the Chechen War, in the 1990s, who are among us today. However, it took some extra tricks to get Chronos working in the cochlea: We had to use powerful viral vectors and certain genetic sequences to improve the delivery of Chronos protein to the cell membrane of the cochlear neurons. Weve also been exploring our options for the implanted light source that will trigger the optogenetic cells. You can find many videos of everyday Ukrainians learning how to make Molotov cocktails and signing up for street patrols to defend their country. Meghan O'Sullivan, Why peace in Ukraine isnt likely soon Copyright 2022 IEEE All rights reserved. Then, other research groups began experimenting with taking the genes that coded for such proteins and using a harmless viral vector to insert them into neurons. The Institute collection Stories of the War in Ukraine.. The Institute reached out to Russian IEEE members to get their views regarding the war, as citizens, engineers, and IEEE members. All these electrical signals encode the sound, and the signal travels up the nerve to the brain. Since optogenetic therapies are just beginning to be tested in clinical trials, theres still some uncertainty about how best to make the technique work in humans. But that connectivitywar as media experienceis still human connection. Anthony Saich, Impacts of Russias war in Ukraine Roman Gorbunov is on the engineering faculty of Novosibirsk State Technical University in Siberia and an expert in the dynamics of distributed power systems and power converters. A cochlear implant bypasses the damaged or dysfunctional parts of the ear and uses electrodes to directly stimulate the cochlear nerve, which sends signals to the brain. To learn more, read our Privacy Policy. But micro-LEDs have drawbacks. We appeal to the IEEE to not discriminate against Russian members, engineers, and researchers. We conducted I believe that Russian soldiers and captains will never fight for something they do not believe in. There are parts of that scrolling that feel prurient. We could theoretically have more than five times as many targets spaced throughout the cochlea, perhaps as many as 64 or 128. The viral vector weve used in experiments thus far, an A limited number of electrodes (12 are shown here) directly stimulate the cells of the cochlear nerve. In a future optical cochlear implant, the external hardware could remain the same, though the processor could break up the sound into narrower frequency bands and transmit a more sophisticated stimulation pattern. Because the frequency selectivity of electrical stimulation is limited, the quality of artificial hearing is limited, too. We delivered CatCh to the cochlear neurons of Mongolian gerbils using a harmless virus as a vector. The ultra-rich are buying them in record numbers. With an electrical cochlear implant, a microphone, processor, and transmitter are worn behind the ear. These 3D microscopic images of mouse ear anatomy show optical implants [dotted lines] twisting through the intricate structure of a normal cochlea, which contains hair cells; in deafness, these cells are lost or damaged. Also, micro-LEDs with the highest efficiency emit blue light, which brings us back to the phototoxicity problem. We see some facts, which look quite realistic, followed by numerous very questionable interpretations.. optogenetics. You do your best not to stare.. Many people said the kinetics of channelrhodopsins made our quest impossiblethat even if we gained spectral resolution, wed lose temporal resolution. These past few days, news obsessives could feel that they had a similarly well-rounded grasp on the military, diplomatic, historical, and human contours of the Ukrainian conflict, in no small part because of civilian-filmed videos, such as one of a bombing in a neighborhood in Kharkiv with the soft crying of a woman audible in the background. Paula Dobriansky, Russian disinformation, propaganda ramp up as conflict inUkraine grows The immersive experience of Ukraine coverage makes us feel deeply involved in the conflict, even from a position of relative impotence in the West. Here we share the thoughts of Roman L. Gorbunov, a member of the Siberia section. The conflict was notable for how much the public already knew about it. Jason Furman, As Russias invasion of Ukraine unfolds, many analysts question what happens next I believe the Russian warriors do everything they can in order to avoid harming civilians. Erica Chenoweth, Why China Wont Mediate an End to the Ukraine War While we might feel connected to the struggles in Ukraine through stories of bravery and valor, theyre not the full story. But the approach seems promising, as it ensures that the optoelectronic components could be safely sealed up and would likely make for an easy insertion of the flexible waveguide array. Gorbunov: Primarily I get information from the Internet news agencies, both Russian and international [https://ria.ru/, https://www.rbc.ru/, https://meduza.io/, and the websites of The New York Times, The Guardian, and CNN]. Sign up for our daily newsletter to receive the best stories from The New Yorker. They want to think well of their own country. Instead of getting the semiconductor emitter itself into the cochlea, the alternative approach puts the light source, such as a laser diode, farther away in a hermetically sealed titanium housing. As we consider assembling these components into a commercial medical device, we first look for parts of existing cochlear implants that we can adopt. Matthew Bunn, Its going to get worse before it gets better in Ukraine Ricardo Hausmann, How democracy drives the resistance in Ukraine The My patients tell me they want more natural sound, more enjoyment of music, and most of all, better comprehension of speech, particularly in settings with background noisethe so-called Also we are constantly discussing the situation with each other. The natural process of hearing, in which hair cells trigger precise points on the cochlear nerve, can be thought of as playing the piano with your fingers; cochlear implants are more equivalent to playing with your fists. There were speeches to catch up on: Putin proclaiming the need to de-Nazify Ukraine, and Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraines first Jewish president, pleading for peace. I am 30 years old and it is impossible for me to imagine my peers harming innocent people. The audio processors that work with todays cochlear implants can be adapted to our purpose; well just need to split up the signal into more channels with smaller frequency ranges. We aim to begin our first-in-human study in 2026, in which well find the safest dose for the gene therapy. In the 2030s, people all over the world could begin to hear the light. They are very contradictory, sometimes even within a single agency. By using our websites, you agree to the placement of these cookies. Volodymyr Pyliavskyi, a researcher who remains in Odessa with his pregnant wife , Hanna Porieva, a professor from Kyiv who is trying to keep safe in a small village , These first-person accounts from IEEE members are part of The fiber-optic approach could have efficiency drawbacks, because wed lose some light when it goes from the laser diode to the fiber, when it travels down the fiber, and when it goes from the fiber to the cochlea. This flexible micro-LED array, fabricated at the University of Freiburg, is wrapped around a glass rod thats 1 millimeter in diameter. Vf-Chrimson is even faster but is less well expressed in the cells than f-Chrimson is; so far, vf-Chrimson has not shown a measurable advantage over f-Chrimson when it comes to high-frequency stimulation of cochlear neurons. How would you characterize that discussion? Hearing loss mainly results from damage to the cochlea caused by disease, noise, or age and, so far, there is no cure. We had to find the right light-sensitive protein to use in the cochlear nerve cells, and we had to figure out how best to deliver the genes that code for those proteins to the right parts of the cochlea. Hair cells in different parts of the cochlea respond to different frequencies of sound, with those at the base of the spiral-shaped cochlea detecting high-pitched sounds of up to about 20 kilohertz, and those at the top of the spiral detecting low-pitched sounds down to about 20 Hz. A Russian soldier or captain would rather sacrifice himself than take an innocent life. Paul Kolbe & Paula Dobriansky, The West is sleepwalking into war in Ukraine The processor translates a sounds pattern of frequencies into a crude stimulation pattern, which is transmitted to an implanted receiver and then to an electrode array that spirals through the cochlea. channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2) that opens an ion channel in response to blue light. Were working now to finalize and freeze the design of the device, and we have ongoing preclinical studies in animals to check for phototoxicity and prove the efficacy of the basic idea. But weve made great progress over the years. Luxury ships attract outrage and political scrutiny. Lauren Zabierek, A lot at stake with oil markets for Russia and the West These should not be interpreted as official positions of The Institute, IEEE Spectrum or of the IEEE. Harder to findrightfully soare images of the civilians dead from cluster-bomb attacks. Yet they make limited use of the neurons available for sound encoding in the cochlea. I have been an otolaryngologist for more than two decades. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. Mariana Budjeryn, Ukraine attack: Putin target may be democracy, near and far This general idea had been taken up earlier by But war is also helltrite but true. At body temperature, once CatCh is activated by light, it takes about a dozen milliseconds to close the channel and be ready for the next activation. Our early proof-of-concept experiments in mice explored both the biology and technology at play in our mission. Maybe we are bearing witness? Ukraine isnt in NATO. Something I must do: Andrey Liscovich PhD 2015 left Silicon Valley to defend his hometown in Ukraine, Are we entering another Cold War? In a functioning human ear, sound waves are channeled down the ear canal and set the ear drum in motion, which in turn vibrates tiny bones in the middle ear. Yes, theres a tangled web of Eurocentrism and racism that makes Americans more outraged at a war in Europe than one in Syria. We are terribly sorry that this is happening and hope the conflict will be over as soon as possible. What would be signs protests in Russia are making a difference? We foresee a future in which beams of light can bring rich soundscapes to people with profound hearing loss or deafness. To understand why, you first need to understand how natural hearing works. I believe the Russian people wish for peace on Earth. I was sitting among mostly pregnant women, all quietly gestating and scrolling; later, Id see a video of NICU nurses in the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro, tending to their tiny patients laid out on benches in a makeshift bomb shelter. We feel digitally proximate to the war, thanks to wall-to-wall coverage. funded our OptoHear project, and in 2019, we spun off a company called OptoGenTech to work toward commercializing our device. A member of the IEEE Siberia section shares his perceptions of the war in Ukraine. Pippa Norris, How to think about the risk of nuclear war, according to 3 experts Pippa Norris, Sanctions will devastate the Russian economywill they destabilise the wests? Whats gainedand lostwhenflower power is electrified? I believe that no one knows what is really happening. We do remember how awful and horrible the Second World War was and about its consequences for every nation. Crass as it may sound, the war in Ukraine is, for Americans, more of a media experience than anything else. The first device was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in the 1980s, and A decade ago, it had been a novel realization that an uprising could be documented from the ground up, in painstaking detail, complete with video evidence. In our continued search for the best channelrhodopsin for our purpose, we tried a ChR2 variant called [Get the in-depth analysis and on-the-ground reporting you need to understand the war in Ukraine. It occurred to me that stimulating the cochlear nerve with light instead of electricity could provide much more precise control, because light can be tightly focused even in the cochleas saline environment. I read a piece in the waiting room of the doctors office about how Russians were shocked by Putins aggression, how analysts chalked up his obsession with the restoration of the U.S.S.R.s borders to pandemic-era isolation. And its also probably about to get much, much worse for the defiant Ukrainians. We aim to start clinical trials in 2026 and, if all goes well, we could get regulatory approval for our device at the beginning of the next decade. So were developing a new kind of cochlear implant that uses light emitters and genetically altered cells that respond to light. And for first-hand accounts of the war by two Ukrainian engineers, see Hanna's story and Volodymyr's story. These movements trigger the hair cells to release neurotransmitters that cause an electrical signal in the neurons of the cochlear nerve. The story of defiant Ukrainian soldiers on Snake Island telling an invading Russian warship to go fuck yourself, before being killed, was inspiring but not true; the Ukrainian Navy now says that the soldiers are all all alive. Paul Kolbe, Autocracy and patriarchy are surging worldwidebut women are pushing back The Government, and especially the Russian President, make enormous efforts to ensure that we do not forget about the tragedies of any war. This is a crucial task for preventing tragic situations like this in the future. I appeal to the competent professionals and scientists to reconstitute an entire picture with careful understanding of its parts. We were proposing a new type of implanted medical device that would be paired with a new type of gene therapy, both of which must meet the highest safety standards. Edward Boyden at MIT, discovered a faster-acting channelrhodopsin that his team called Chronos. This center and many others across the country powerfully remind us about the evils of any war. Gene therapy and optoelectronics could radically upgrade hearing for millions of people. With those tricks, both single neurons and the neural population responded robustly and with good temporal precision to optical stimulation at higher rates of up to about 250 Hz. There are stark feats of photojournalism everywhere, and compelling interviews with some of the half a million Ukrainians fleeing their homes. My mind flashed to the Afghan war memorial Id seen when Id visited Yekaterinburg a few years ago: an iron soldier, sitting with a Kalashnikov in hand, head downcast, the names of all the dead encircling hima memorial to a war that people resented. The risks of nuclear weapon use in theUkraine crisis The idea for a better way began back in 2005, when I started hearing about a new technique being pioneered in neuroscience called A better strategy would be to try to understand the real motivation of the conflict and use this understanding in a way to help Ukraine and Russia in their negotiations. Calder Walton, Russias attack is illegal and a wake-up call to the West This Q&A contains views that are at odds with international reporting on the war in Ukraine. Another thing was made clear early on: the U.S. would not be intervening. Stephen Walt, Watch carefully how China responds to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, says national security analyst Tony Saich, Ukraine war drives Europe toward unity on bolstering defense Jane Lytvynenko, A hurting stalemate? Roman Gorbunov: I dont feel Im informed about the situation in Ukraine. The array is shown with its 144 diodes turned off [left] and operating at 1 milliamp [right]. Are you confident that you are getting sufficient information about the situation in Ukraine to be well informed about it? Many early efforts in optogenetics used Lawrence Summers, Can intelligence tell how far Putin will go? In fact, that uncertainty is the main obstacle now. The upshot was that shining a light on these genetically altered neurons could trigger them to open their voltage-gated ion channels and thus fire, or activate, allowing researchers to directly control living animals brains and behaviors. The user would have a gene-therapy treatment to make the cells of the cochlear nerve responsive to light, which would trigger precise signals that travel up the nerve to the brain. As our regular readers might know, we sometimes publish opinion articles. Then we deafened the gerbils by applying a drug that kills hair cells and inserted a tiny optical cochlear implant to stimulate the light-sensitized cochlear neurons. Once, it sparked dreams of community and counterculture. - IEEE , The Long Road to Today's Cochlear Implant - IEEE Spectrum , How Do Cochlear Hearing Implants Work? The VW Bus Took the Sixties on the Road. Although it still required blue light for activation, Chronos was the fastest channelrhodopsin to date, taking about 3.6 milliseconds to close at room temperature. Belfer Center experts, The case for a punitive tax on Russian oil Were still thinking about how to get the viral vector to deliver the necessary genes to the correct neurons in the cochlea. He is also, if the Russians take control of the country, almost certainly a dead man. An artist captures the fight for airspace over Kyiv. The case for placing an immediate energy embargo on Russia. Ulrich Schwarz and Patrick Ruther, then at the University of Freiburg, started things off by developing the first micro-light-emitting diodes (micro-LEDs) for optical cochlear implants. Ad Choices. Everyone is deeply concerned about the catastrophe in Ukraine. A commercial cochlear implant today has a microphone, processor, and transmitter that are worn on the head, as well as a receiver and electrodes that are implanted. But the truly novel parts of our systemthe optical stimulator and the gene therapy to deliver the channelrhodopsins to the cochleawill require a good amount of scrutiny. severalexperiments with microfabricated thin-film micro-LEDs and demonstrated that we could optogenetically stimulate the cochlear nerve in our targeted frequency ranges. But the saline fluid within the cochlea is conductive, so the current from each electrode spreads out and causes broad activation of neurons across the frequency map of the cochlea. From geopolitics to sanctions to the role of misinformation and cyberattacks, HKS scholars analyze the Russian invasion of Ukraine and what it means for the world. Yes, there will be worthy endeavors, such as providing weapons, sharing intelligence, and assisting refugees, but our geopolitical might is mostly on hold for fear of conflict with a nuclear power. cocktail party problem. Inside the fluid-filled cochlea, a membrane ripples in response to sound vibrations, and those ripples move bundles of sensory hair cells that project from the surface of that membrane. Lauren Zabierek, The economic consequences of the Ukraine war We teamed up with Bamberg to take on the challenge. The optical cochlear implant will enable people to pick out voices in a busy meeting and appreciate the subtleties of their favorite songs. Two of those members shared their stories with us. Are you able to share your own perspective on the situation in Ukraine? Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Matthew Bunn, Summers says more dangerous world requires an FDR-like pivot The deaf animals responded to this light stimulation just as they had to the auditory stimulus. Human hearing depends on the cochlea, a snail-shaped structure in the inner ear. Therefore instead of giving my own perspective Ill provide the facts I truly believe in. Wed need to determine the best light source to use in the optogenetic system and how to transmit it to the proper spots in the cochlea. Most major U.S. newspapers have some sort of around-the-clock live blog of events. A new kind of cochlear implant for people with disabling hearing loss would use beams of light to stimulate the cochlear nerve. We were pleased to discover that f-Chrimson enables cochlear neurons to respond to red light reliably up to stimulation rates of approximately 200 Hz. calcium translocating channelrhodopsin (CatCh) from the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics lab of Ernst Bamberg, one of the world pioneers of optogenetics. On March 7 I visited the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow. | NIDCD . Im sure in a situation like this there couldnt be a reliable source of information. As crowds of protesters took to the streets in St. Petersburg, reports on Twitter showed videos of what were apparently Russian aerial attacks on an airport near Kyiv. Ive long been interested in how sound is encoded and how this coding goes wrong in hearing impairment. What are your primary sources of information regarding the war? In 2015, the European Research Council gave us a vote of confidence when it We publish such articles to promote discussion and for the insights they reveal about the plurality of views among IEEE members. The other problem with CatCh is that its slow to reset. It forces everyone to halt the projects theyre working on and search for alternative solutions. Steve Walt, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Reform, refugees, and the war next door: President Maia Sandu of Moldova, Helping Ukraine win against Russia is a vital NATO interest, Russia is using rape as a weapon of war against Ukraine, OSullivan and Frankel: How the sanctions on Putins Russia are reshaping the world economic order, Blending technology with psychology to engage Russian people on the Ukraine war.