Interactions between Acoustic and Electric Stimulation

描述(申请人提供)：人工耳蜗术已经恢复了全球100,000多名听障人士的部分听力。随着人工耳蜗性能的持续改善，越来越多的残留听力患者有资格接受人工耳蜗术，有些患者已经接受了人工耳蜗术。我们已经确定了三组植入物患者具有显著的残余声听力：那些在对侧佩戴助听器的患者，那些在同一只耳朵使用联合电声刺激的患者，以及那些使用植入物抑制耳鸣并可能有正常听力的对侧患者。我们建议在这些受试者中系统地研究听觉和电听觉之间的相互作用。我们的三个具体目标是：1.构建准确的电听力基音图；2.测量声刺激和电刺激之间的心理物理相互作用；3.探索双峰听力的机制和优化其性能。准确的基音图将使我们能够重构“电谐波”，并开发出真实的人工耳蜗声学模拟。对心理物理相互作用的系统描述对于理解双峰听力的机制和最大限度地发挥其益处是必要的。这项拟议的工作具有很高的临床意义，因为它可能有助于克服当前人工耳蜗术中最显著的两个缺点，即音乐感知和具有背景噪声的语音识别，特别是当噪声是竞争声音的时候。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Cochleae implants have restored partial hearing to more than 100,000 hearing-impaired people worldwide. As cochlear implant performance continues to improve, more and more patients with residual acoustic hearing are eligible for, and some have received, a cochlear implant. We have identified three groups of implant patients who possess significant residual acoustic hearing: those who have a hearing aid on the contralateral side, those who use combined electro-acoustic stimulation in the same ear, and those who use the implant to suppress tinnitus and may have normal hearing contralaterally. We propose to systematically study the interactions between acoustic and electric hearing in these subjects. Our three specific aims are: 1. To construct an accurate pitch map in electric hearing 2. To measure psychophysical interactions between acoustic and electric stimulation 3. To probe the mechanisms and optimize the performance of bimodal hearing An accurate pitch map will allow us to reconstruct "electric harmonics" and develop authentic acoustic simulations of the cochlear implant. A systematic characterization of the psychophysical interactions is necessary to understand the mechanisms and maximize the benefit of bimodal hearing. The proposed work is of high clinical relevance because it may help overcome two of the most significant shortcomings of the current cochlear implants, namely, music perception and speech recognition with background noise, particularly when the noise is a competing voice.