<P> André Djourno and Charles Eyriès invented the original cochlear implant in 1957 . This original design distributed stimulation using a single channel . Two years later they went their separate ways due to personal and professional differences (Svirsky M, 2017). </P> <P> The first cochlear implant was invented by Dr. William House, in 1961 . In 1964, Blair Simmons and Robert J. White implanted a six channel electrode in a patient's cochlea at Stanford University . </P> <P> The modern multichannel cochlear implant was independently developed and commercialized by Graeme Clark from Australia and Ingeborg Hochmair and her future husband, Erwin Hochmair, with the Hochmairs' first implanted in a person in December 1977 and Clark's in August 1978 . </P> <P> Cochlear implants bypass most of the peripheral auditory system which receives sound and converts that sound into movements of hair cells in the cochlea; the inside - portion of these hair cells release potassium ions in response to the movement of the hairs, and the potassium in turn stimulates other cells to release the neurotransmitter, glutamate, which makes the cochlear nerve send signals to the brain, which creates the experience of sound . Instead, the devices pick up sound and digitize it, convert that digitized sound into electrical signals, and transmit those signals to electrodes embedded in the cochlea . The electrodes electrically stimulate the cochlear nerve, causing it to send signals to the brain . </P>

Who developed and commercialised the modern multichannel cochlear implant (bionic ear)