Bilateral cochlear implants: Physiology and psychophysics

双侧人工耳蜗：生理学和心理物理学

• 批准号: 7856891
• 负责人: Bertrand Delgutte
• 金额: $ 18.92万
• 依托单位: MASSACHUSETTS EYE AND EAR INFIRMARY
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-07-17 至 2011-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7856891
• 关键词: Acoustic Nerve; Acoustic Stimulation; Acoustics; Address; Adult; Affect; Age of Onset; Animal Model; Animal Testing; Animals; Anus; Auditory; Behavioral; Bilateral; Biophysics; Boston; Brain Stem; Cochlea; Cochlear Implants; Cochlear implant procedure; Complex; Cues; Data; Development; Discrimination; Ear; Electric Stimulation; Electrodes; Electronics; Environment; Eye; Face; Felis catus; Goals; Grant; Hearing; Hearing Impaired Persons; Human; Implant; Individual; Inferior Colliculus; Ion Channel; Lead; Massachusetts; Medial; Midbrain structure; Modeling; Morphology; Nerve Fibers; Neurons; Noise; Patients; Pattern; Performance; Peripheral; Physiological; Physiology; Plants; Population; Process; Property; Psychology; Psychophysics; Psychophysiology; Recording of previous events; Research Personnel; Series; Shapes; Sound Localization; Source; Speech; Stimulus; System; Techniques; Testing; Time; Universities; Work; auditory pathway; binaural hearing; compare effectiveness; computer studies; critical period; deafness; deprivation; design; electric field; experience; human subject; implantation; improved; lateral superior olive; neurophysiology; novel strategies; relating to nervous system; research study; response; sound; trend

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Bilateral cochlear implantation aims at restoring the functional benefits of binaural hearing to the profoundly deaf. While wearers of bilateral implants show improved sound localization and speech reception in noise, their ability to process interaural time differences (ITD) is still far from normal, resulting in smaller binaural benefits than normal in everyday acoustic environments. In this application, investigators from the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, MIT, and Boston University combine their expertise in psychophysics, neurophysiology and neural computation in order to gain a basic understanding of the ITD processing with bilateral cochlear implants. Psychophysical experiments in bilaterally-implanted human subjects will be conducted in parallel with single-unit recordings from the inferior colliculus of deaf cats implanted bilaterally with intracochlear electrode arrays. The specific aims are to (1) compare neural ITD sensitivity in animals differing in age of onset of deafness and duration of deafness in order to test whether deprivation of binaural experience has an effect on ITD sensitivity and whether there is a critical period for these effects; (2) characterize the effects of electrode interactions on both neural and behavioral ITD sensitivity in order to understand how ITD is processed with multi-channel stimulation as occurs when listening through a processor and in the presence of multiple sound sources; (3) develop models for binaural brainstem neurons to understand the mechanisms underlying neural ITD sensitivity with bilateral implants, and models for activity patterns in populations of neurons to predict psychophysical performance, and compare the effectiveness of various strategies for estimating the stimulus ITD from the population activity. These studies will increase our basic understanding of how neural, psychophysical and electrode factors interact with binaural experience in shaping performance with bilateral cochlear implants. They are also likely to lead to new binaural sound processors for bilateral cochlear implants that work better in everyday acoustic environments comprising multiple sound sources and reverberation, and that are adapted to specific types of patients depending on their history of binaural experience and deprivation. Finally, the combination of controlled deafening, bilateral cochlear implantation and neural recording offers a novel approach for studying the plasticity of the binaural system. The profoundly deaf increasingly receive cochlear implants in both ears in the hope that such bilateral implantation will improve their ability to localize sounds and understand speech in noise. Our studies combine expertise from neurophysiology, psychology and biophysics in order to gain a basic understanding of the challenges wearers of bilateral implants face in everyday situations and how performance interacts with their history of deafness. These studies will likely lead to new electronic sound processors for bilateral implants that work better in noise and are better adapted to specific types of deafness histories.

描述（由申请人提供）：双侧人工耳蜗植入旨在恢复重度耳聋患者双耳听力的功能益处。虽然双边植入物的佩戴者在噪音中表现出声音定位和语音接收能力的改善，但他们处理耳间时间差 (ITD) 的能力仍远未达到正常水平，导致双耳效益比日常声学环境中的正常情况要小。在此应用中，来自马萨诸塞州眼耳医院、麻省理工学院和波士顿大学的研究人员结合了他们在心理物理学、神经生理学和神经计算方面的专业知识，以便对双侧人工耳蜗的 ITD 处理有基本的了解。双侧植入人类受试者的心理物理学实验将与双侧植入耳蜗内电极阵列的聋猫下丘的单单元记录并行进行。具体目的是（1）比较不同耳聋发病年龄和耳聋持续时间的动物的神经ITD敏感性，以测试双耳体验的剥夺是否对ITD敏感性有影响以及这些影响是否存在关键期； (2) 表征电极相互作用对神经和行为 ITD 敏感性的影响，以便了解在通过处理器聆听和存在多个声源时如何通过多通道刺激处理 ITD； (3) 开发双耳脑干神经元模型，以了解双侧植入神经 ITD 敏感性的机制，以及神经元群体活动模式模型，以预测心理物理表现，并比较从群体活动估计刺激 ITD 的各种策略的有效性。这些研究将增进我们对神经、心理物理和电极因素如何与双耳体验相互作用以塑造双侧人工耳蜗表现的基本了解。它们还可能为双耳人工耳蜗带来新的双耳声音处理器，这些处理器在包括多个声源和混响的日常声学环境中工作得更好，并且根据患者的双耳体验和剥夺历史来适应特定类型的患者。最后，受控震耳欲聋、双侧人工耳蜗植入和神经记录的结合为研究双耳系统的可塑性提供了一种新方法。严重失聪的人越来越多地在双耳中植入人工耳蜗，希望这种双侧植入能够提高他们在噪声中定位声音和理解语音的能力。我们的研究结合了神经生理学、心理学和生物物理学的专业知识，以便基本了解双侧植入物佩戴者在日常情况下面临的挑战以及表现如何与其耳聋史相互作用。这些研究可能会催生用于双侧植入物的新型电子声音处理器，该处理器在噪声中工作得更好，并且更适合特定类型的耳聋史。