Enhanced Pitch Discrimination for Cochlear Implant Users with a New Haptic Neuroprosthetic
Enhanced Pitch Discrimination for Cochlear Implant Users with a New Haptic Neuroprosthetic
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DOI：
10.1038/s41598-020-67140-0
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发表时间：
2020-06-25
影响因子：
4.6
通讯作者：
Perry, Samuel W.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Fletcher, Mark D.;Thini, Nour;Perry, Samuel W.
人工耳蜗（CI）是使用最广泛的神经假体，为50多万轻度至重度听力受损的人恢复听力。然而，CI仍然有很大的局限性，用户的音高感知严重受损。音高对于语音理解（特别是在噪声中），在复杂的声学环境中分离不同的声音以及欣赏音乐至关重要。近几十年来，研究人员试图通过改进植入技术和手术技术来克服CI的缺点，但成功有限。在目前的研究中，我们采取了一种新的方法，通过前臂上的触觉刺激提供缺失的音高信息，使用我们的新的mosaicOne_B设备。mosaicOne_B实时提取音高信息，并通过沿前臂沿着排列的12个电机呈现音高信息，每个电机代表不同的音高。在听力正常的受试者听CI模拟音频，我们表明，参与者能够区分音高差异在一个类似的性能水平，实现正常听力的听众。此外，该设备被证明是高度鲁棒的背景噪声。这种增强的音高辨别具有显著改善CI用户的音乐感知、语音识别和语音韵律感知的潜力。
The cochlear implant (CI) is the most widely used neuroprosthesis, recovering hearing for more than half a million severely-to-profoundly hearing-impaired people. However, CIs still have significant limitations, with users having severely impaired pitch perception. Pitch is critical to speech understanding (particularly in noise), to separating different sounds in complex acoustic environments, and to music enjoyment. In recent decades, researchers have attempted to overcome shortcomings in CIs by improving implant technology and surgical techniques, but with limited success. In the current study, we take a new approach of providing missing pitch information through haptic stimulation on the forearm, using our new mosaicOne_B device. The mosaicOne_B extracts pitch information in real-time and presents it via 12 motors that are arranged in ascending pitch along the forearm, with each motor representing a different pitch. In normal-hearing subjects listening to CI simulated audio, we showed that participants were able to discriminate pitch differences at a similar performance level to that achieved by normal-hearing listeners. Furthermore, the device was shown to be highly robust to background noise. This enhanced pitch discrimination has the potential to significantly improve music perception, speech recognition, and speech prosody perception in CI users.