10-year-old Rachel Knobel says a cochlear implant comes in handy, especially when she can turn it off, "In a thunderstorm, all you hear, you don't hear anything, you only see the lightening."

Rachel was born profoundly deaf and received the high-tech hearing device at 18 months, "I feel like if we had waited just a little bit longer, I wouldn't be as…gifted as I am."

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University agree.

Dr. David Ryugo, Ph.D., says, "The longer a child is deaf, the longer the duration of deafness, the less benefit there is for using a cochlear implant."

The Hopkins study found that by 6 to 12 months of age, a child's brain 'needs' to hear sound to develop properly.

Dr. John Niparko says, "If we don't provide that kind of information the brain hungers for, in fact, there are connections that are either lost or they are abnormal."

Doctors pinpointed the specific nerve connections that deteriorate during deafness and found that early intervention keeps them in tact. Dr. Ryugo, "We've identified where there is an abnormality and we know we can fix it, or at least prevent it using cochlear implants."

Rachel's living proof. She's been tuned-in to sounds and speech just as if she had normal hearing.

"She picked up on it and she closed her language gap very quickly and she has done extremely well," says Julie Steinberg. And that's music to a parent's ear.

More than 10,000 children are born deaf every year in the United States. Doctors say 1.5 million are good candidates for cochlear implants.

By Bryce Mursch
http://www.wistv.com/Global/story.asp?S=4591236