This should also reduce the risk of damage to the cochlea during insertion.

ECONOMIST: Cochlear implants

The special device, which passes sound to the cochlea sound through the skull, was fitted at Kings Cross in Dundee.

BBC: bonebridge

Today's electrodes are bundles of wires that are fed into the snail-shaped cochlea of the inner ear and stimulate it in as many as 22 places.

ECONOMIST: Cochlear implants

You wouldn't immediately think of the ear's cochlea as an energy source, but MIT knows that every mammal effectively has a pair of very small power plants because of the ionized environment.

ENGADGET: MIT ear-powered wireless sensor sustains its charge through sound