[Cooper:] Most of us, of course, don't remember the first time we heard a sound. In fact, none of us do. It's impossible, because it happened while we were still in the womb. But a 3-year-old boy named Grayson Clamp was born totally deaf and will never forget that moment when he first heard sound. It was captured on video. Take a look.
[Unidentified Male:] Daddy loves you. Daddy loves you. Daddy loves you.
[Unidentified Female:] Yes. He hears.
[Unidentified Male:] Can you hear daddy?
[Cooper:] It's an incredible moment, obviously, for Grayson and his family. He was born without the nerves needed to process and hear sound. He's the first child in the United States to get what's called an auditory brain stem implant, a device that's being studied in clinical trials across the country. He had the surgery in April in North Carolina. Joining me now is our chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta. So, I mean, it's remarkable to see his face light up like that. How does this implant work?
[Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Cnn Chief Medical Correspondent:] I can't stop watching this video. It's just amazing when he hears that sound for the first time. You know, let me show you the way this works. I mean, again, it's just it is remarkable. We're working at a true medical sort of first here. As you pointed out, Anderson, the nerve that goes from his ear to his brain stem, that's what he essentially doesn't have. That's a very specific kind of hearing loss. So what they're trying to do is they're basically recreating part of his nervous system. Let me show you here on my brain model. So this is the left right side of the brain. This, you see the microphone that's sort of sitting around his ear. That takes sound, sort of processes it, distills it to various frequencies, Anderson, and then literally, there's a wire that goes straight to his brain stem, to the cochlear nuclei over here. You don't need to remember the name. But just know this: That it takes that sound that it's hearing and sort of shuttles it all throughout the brain, allowing him to have that reaction that you just saw there. One of total surprise, and "what is that" as he heard his dad's voice for the first time.
[Cooper:] And this is different than the cochlear implant?
[Gupta:] It is different than the cochlear implant. The cochlear implant, you essentially have something defective in your inner ear. But the nerve that goes from your inner ear to the your brain, the brain stem, that's working. So you don't need to replace that. In a very small percentage of people, including Grayson, they don't have the nerve at all. So it's a much more it's a much more difficult problem in some ways to tackle. But the way they tackled it was essentially to create a part of his nervous system. It's just an unbelievably remarkable thing.
[Cooper:] You know, watching the whole video, he seemed sort of confused or thrown by it. I can't imagine what it's like to live, you know, that many years of your life without hearing any sound and then all of a sudden hearing sound. Do the doctors know how much he can hear and exactly what he hears?
[Gupta:] It's a great question. And it's difficult to know. We ask them the same thing. And they say they know he is sound aware. He's clearly hearing sounds. How much he can actually process of that sound and recognize of his language, that's harder to tell. One anecdote that they share with me is he seems to love music. In fact, when he hears music, he will go over and turn the music even louder. He seems to enjoy that. But he's 3 years old. And, you know, we talk about this idea that your brain is pretty plastic at that age. So he's probably going to grow and learn very rapidly what to make of these sounds and transmit them into something actually useful for him.
[Cooper:] Will he be able to speak at some point?
[Gupta:] That's what they say. Again, we asked the same thing. They think he'll be able to understand hear the language, understand it and then be able to express himself through spoken language, as well. The doctors seem pretty convinced of this. I should point out, this is the first time it's ever been done on a kid in this country. It has been done on adults before. But again, kids' brains are still developing. So it's just a little bit unclear how much, you know, the brain has already bit off, what it's going to be able adapt to specifically. But the doctors seem very, very optimistic that he's going to be able do that.
[Cooper:] So this is just a testing I mean, it's going to be available to anybody with his condition?
[Gupta:] Yes. Right now, it's very much in testing phase. He's the first child in America to have this done. It's been approved for ten children, five of whom don't have that nerve at all, the nerve going from the ear to the brain. Five who had the nerve, but the nerve was traumatized in some way, damaged, so it's not useful. But you know, this seems to be working so far with Grayson. He's sort of the first first patient. But if it continues to work, and that's the goal, to make it much more widely available.
[Cooper:] Yes. Well, we wish him the best. Him and his family. Sanjay, thanks.
[Gupta:] Thank you, Anderson.
[Cooper:] That's so cool. Grayson's parents will be on "NEW DAY" tomorrow morning, starting at 6 a.m. We'll be right back.