Reduction in spread of excitation as predictor multi-channel spectral resolution

描述（由申请人提供）：人工耳蜗（CIs）为大多数耳聋患者提供了良好的功能性听力，但在噪音或复杂的声音（如音乐）中听力的益处有限。为了提高人工耳蜗的性能，我们需要在这些困难的听力情况下识别出最重要的线索，并找到通过人工耳蜗呈现这些线索的方法。提高光谱选择性可以提高植入物的性能，但受到物理、生物和感知因素的限制。对于单个植入听者，光谱选择性可能受到不良电极放置和/或不良神经存活的限制。新的技术（电流聚焦）已经被研究来减少电流扩散从而提高光谱选择性。然而，我们实验室的数据表明，电流聚焦只减少了大约一半的患者的兴奋扩散（SOE）。只有当SOE实际减少时，才能期望当前焦点带来的性能改进。在拟议的实验中，我们将首次在受试者内部测量噪声和音乐任务中的语音变化（具体目标3），因为它们与多通道频谱模式识别（具体目标2）的变化和单通道SOE的减少（具体目标1）有关。我们希望发现当前的重点可以导致国有企业的减少，这反过来也会减少

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Cochlear implants (CIs) provide excellent functional hearing to most deaf individuals, but the benefits are limited when listening in noise or to complex sounds like music. To improve cochlear implant performance we need to identify the most important cues for these difficult listening situations and find ways to present these cues through the implant. Improving spectral selectivity should improve implant performance but is limited by physical, biological and perceptual factors. For an individual implant listener, spectra selectivity may be limited by poor electrode placement and/or poor nerve survival. New techniques (current focusing) have been investigated to reduce current spread and therefore improve spectral selectivity. However, data from our lab suggest that current focusing only reduces spread of excitation (SOE) in about half of the patients tested. Performance improvements from current focusing can only be expected when the SOE is actually reduced. In the proposed experiments, we will provide the first within-subject's measurements of changes in speech in noise and music tasks (Specific Aim 3) as they relate to changes in multi-channel spectral pattern discrimination (Specific Aim 2) and reduction in single-channel SOE (Specific Aim 1). We expect to find that current focusing can result in reductions in SOE, which in turn will produce improvements in speech in noise and music performance. However, because of local neural survival, electrode placement, and variable local impedances, we expect to find that a reduction in SOE will only be achievable in a subset of patients. Therefore, we will also investigate quick (and clinically relevant) methods of predicting which patients will benefit from current focusing (experiments 2 and 3). The overall goals of this research are to determine if functional spectral resolution can be improved via current focusing for some patients and to determine in a clinically relevant procedure which patients would benefit from current focusing. We hypothesize that if current focusing can reduce the spread of excitation, then spectral resolution will be increased and improve CI performance in challenging listening conditions (e.g., speech in noise, music). The proposed research is significant because it aims to: a) evaluate the relationship between changes in SOE, multi-channel discrimination, and performance in speech and music tasks, b) improve performance for CI listeners. The research is innovative as the first study to investigate within subjects the effect of single-channel SOE on multi-channel spectral and speech processor performance by directly manipulating the degree of current spread. The research approach combines objective measures (ECAPs), subjective descriptors, single- and multi-channel psychophysics, and evaluations of experimental signal processing to better understand who might benefit from current focusing, and under what circumstances.