Speech understanding and signal detection in noise in bilateral cochlear implants

描述（由申请人提供）：申请人目前的研究涉及单侧和双侧耳蜗植入（CI）用户的语音理解和声音定位。具体而言，申请人研究了CI用户中用于正中矢状面声音定位的耳廓线索的包含和检测。它包括语音理解实验，直接多电极刺激实验和声音定位实验。申请人还继续研究动态双耳现象，这是他在密歇根州立大学的论文题目。动态双耳现象与在困难的听力条件下理解语音有关，如混响或嘈杂的房间。拟议的研究将是博士后和论文研究领域的自然延续。它旨在将言语理解、双耳听力、声音定位和人工耳蜗植入等领域联合收割机结合起来。所提出的研究是新颖的，因为其旨在了解受控多电极刺激下双侧CI的优势、能力和局限性。受控多电极刺激研究最近才开始;这项研究的大部分是在申办者的实验室进行的。关于这一主题的研究是双边CI研究的一个合乎逻辑的下一步，它将有助于了解双边植入的一个重要优势，即在嘈杂的环境中理解语音。推动这项工作的主要假设是，目前的CI系统引入了与健康听觉系统的根本差异，这些差异改变了重要的声学信息，足以显着降低任何双耳听力优势。这些限制中的一些可以通过不同的处理方案来补偿，而其他限制是电刺激固有的，并且不能用当前生成的CI来补偿。建议研究的指导阶段将集中在单电极双耳信号检测。独立阶段的研究将集中在多电极双耳信号检测和语音理解在现实的听力环境。最终目的是为双侧CI用户的语音理解提供双耳优势。相关性：人工耳蜗植入领域的主要目标是为深度耳聋患者提供更好的语言理解能力。这个领域的一个主要研究问题是用两只耳朵听。拟议的工作将系统地检查可能导致耳蜗植入者和正常听力者之间声学感知差异的因素。这些研究将指导未来人工耳蜗的设计。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The applicant's current research involves speech understanding and sound localization for unilateral and bilateral cochlear-implant (CI) users. Specifically, the applicant studies the inclusion and detection of pinna cues for median-sagittal-plane sound localization in CI users. It involves speech understanding experiments, experiments with direct multi-electrode stimulation, and sound localization experiments. The applicant also continues to work on dynamic binaural phenomena, which was his dissertation topic at Michigan State University. Dynamic binaural phenomena are related to understanding speech in difficult listening conditions, like reverberant or noisy rooms. The proposed research will be a natural continuation of the post-doc and dissertation research areas. It aims to combine the areas of speech understanding, binaural hearing, sound localization, and cochlear implants. The proposed research is novel because it aims to understand the advantages, capabilities, and limitations of bilateral CIs under controlled multi-electrode stimulation. Controlled multi-electrode stimulation research has only started recently; much of this research is being performed at the sponsor's lab. Research on this topic is a logical next step in bilateral CI research; it would help provide understanding of an important advantage of bilateral implantation, that of understanding speech in noisy environments. The main hypothesis driving this work is that current CI systems introduce fundamental differences from the healthy auditory system, and these differences alter important acoustic information enough to significantly diminish any binaural hearing advantage. Some of these limitations may be compensated by different processing schemes, while others are intrinsic to electrical stimulation and cannot be compensated with the current generation of CIs. The mentored phase of the proposed research will focus on single- electrode binaural signal detection. The independent phase of the proposed research will focus on multi- electrode binaural signal detection and speech understanding in realistic listening environments. The ultimate aim is to provide a binaural advantage to bilateral CI users' speech understanding. RELEVANCE: The main goal in the field of cochlear implants is to provide better speech understanding for profoundly deaf individuals. A major research question in this field is hearing with two ears. The proposed work will systematically examine factors that may cause a difference in acoustic perception between cochlear-implant and normal-hearing listeners. These studies will guide the design of future cochlear implants.