Complex stimulus perception with cochlear implants

描述（由申请人提供）：今天的耳蜗植入听众享受 安静时言语理解能力相当好，但通常会出现严重的 在存在背景声音的情况下性能恶化。提供 通过人工耳蜗植入的可用语音信息， 竞争来源（语音或非语音），基本原则， 通过电刺激对复杂的多通道刺激的感知 听觉系统需要研究。该提案旨在调查 耳蜗植入者复杂模式感知的潜在机制。 这项研究的长期目标是发现 电刺激和正常听觉的复合刺激感知 听觉系统将研究两个假设： a）感知组织的原理可以被人工耳蜗使用 用于分离来自多个源的声音的收听器， B）噪声通常在生物系统的信号处理中是重要的， 特别是听觉系统，以及引入的正确类型的噪音 植入人工耳蜗将是有益的。 所提出的实验旨在测量感知交互 在具有相似/不相似时间包络的脉冲串载波之间 激发邻近/远距离音调位置。方法包括检测 和复杂刺激的辨别，感知差异测量，以及 听觉流测量。噪声对包络线索检测的影响 将测量单通道和多通道复杂刺激。预计 这项研究将产生对听觉机制的基本见解， 人工耳蜗的感知能力。由于其基本性质， 这些发现可能也会进一步加深我们对正常情况下 听觉系统功能正常

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant):Cochlear implant listeners today enjoy reasonably good speech understanding in quiet but generally experience severe deterioration in performance in the presence of background sounds. To provide usable speech information through the cochlear implant in the presence of competing sources (speech or nonspeech), basic principles underlying the perception of complex, multichannel stimuli by the electrically stimulated auditory system need to be investigated. This proposal aims to investigate mechanisms underlying complex pattern perception by cochlear implant listeners. The long-term goal of this research is to discover fundamental principles of complex stimulus perception by both electrically stimulated and normal hearing auditory systems. Two hypotheses will be investigated: a) that principles of perceptual organization can be used by cochlear implant listeners for separating out sounds from multiple sources and b) noise is important in signal processing by biological systems in general and by the auditory system in particular, and the right kind of noise introduced into cochlear implants will be beneficial. The proposed experiments are designed to measure the perceptual interactions between pulse-train carriers with similar / dissimilar temporal envelopes exciting adjacent / distant tonotopic locations. Methods will include detection and discrimination of complex stimuli, perceptual difference measures, and auditory streaming measures. Effects of noise on the detection of envelope cues in single- and multi-channel complex stimuli will be measured. It is expected that this research will yield fundamental insight into mechanisms of auditory perception with cochlear implants. Because of their fundamental nature, the findings are likely to also further our understanding of the normally functioning auditory system.