Binaural hearing is extremely important in everyday life, most notably for sound localization and for understanding speech embedded in competing sound sources (e.g., other speech sources). While bilateral implantation has been shown to provide cochlear implant (CIs) listeners with some basic left/right localization ability, the performance with current CI systems is clearly reduced compared to normal hearing. Moreover, the binaural advantage in speech understanding in noise has been shown to be mediated mainly by the better-ear effect, while there is only very little binaural unmasking.
There exists now a body of literature on binaural sensitivity of CI listeners stimulated at a single interaural electrode pair. However, the CI listener’s sensitivity to binaural cues under more realistic conditions, i.e., with stimulation at multiple electrodes, has not been systematically addressed in depth so far.
This project attempts to fill this gap. In particular, given the high perceptual importance of ITDs, this project focuses on the systematic investigation of the sensitivity to ITD under various conditions of multi-electrode stimulation, including interference from neighboring channels, integration of ITD information across channels, and the perceptually tolerable room for degradations of binaural timing information.
Involved people:
Start: January 2013
Duration: 3 years
Funding: MED-EL