Cochlear Implant performance in Realistic Listening Environments

描述(申请人提供)：在不久的将来，大多数人工耳蜗术患者将用两只“耳朵”听力--或者两个人工耳蜗术(CI)，或者在对侧耳使用CI和助听器(电声联合听力或EAS)。本文提出的研究目标是开发一种与这两种干预措施相关的临床决策工具。临床决策将主要取决于用于评估两只耳朵参与语音理解的益处的测试和环境的性质。标准的临床测试环境只能近似于听者周围有声音的真实世界环境。具有多个空间分离的扬声器的实验室环境可以模拟真实世界的环境，但由于时间、空间和成本的原因，不能在临床上复制。在这个项目中，我们将在标准和现实的测试环境中测试EAS和双边CI患者，目标是创建一个决策矩阵，将临床上可以轻松收集的数据(例如安静状态下的NC评分和剩余听力)与临床无法收集的数据(即通过多个空间分离的扬声器收集的数据)联系起来。我们建议在两个真实的测试环境中测试双侧CI患者和EAS患者，该系统由8个扬声器组成，可以高保真地模拟(I)以言语杂音为噪声的餐厅环境，以及(Ii)以相互竞争的句子材料为噪声的鸡尾酒会环境--一种“信息”掩蔽的情况。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): In the near future most cochlear implant patients will hear with two 'ears' -- either with two cochlear implants (CI) or with a CI and a hearing aid in the opposite ear (combined electric and acoustic hearing or EAS). The goal of the research proposed here is to develop a tool for clinical decision making relative to these two interventions. Clinical decision making will depend critically on the nature of the tests and environments used to assess the benefit of having two ears participate in speech understanding. Standard clinical test environments can only approximate the real world environment of having sound surround the listener. Laboratory environments with multiple, spatially separated speakers can simulate real world environments but cannot be duplicated in the clinic for reasons of time, space and cost. In this project we will test EAS and bilateral CI patients in both standard and realistic test environments with the goal of creating a decision matrix that links data that can be easily collected in the clinic, e.g., CNC scores in quiet and the amount of residual hearing, with data that cannot be collected in the clinic, i.e., data collected with multiple, spatially separated loudspeakers. We propose to test bilateral CI patients and EAS patients in two realistic test environments using an 8-speaker 'surround sound system' which can simulate, with high fidelity, (i) a restaurant environment with speech babble as the noise, and (ii) a cocktail party environment with competing sentence material as the noise - a situation of 'informational' masking.