Dr. Michael Merzenich’s groundbreaking revelation of adult brain plasticity helped him design the cochlear implant, a device that has restored hearing for more than a million people with deafness. Honored with the Richard N. Merkin Prize in Biomedical Technology, his work continues to reshape global perceptions of what the human brain can achieve.

In 2017, poet Raymond Antrobus stepped into a Durham classroom and met Thomas, an 11-year-old with silver hearing aids whose curiosity changed the writer’s life. Their brief exchange now anchors Antrobus’s forthcoming memoir, The Quiet Ear: An Investigation of Missing Sound, an exploration of deafness, poetry, and the search for meaning.