Interactions between Acoustic and Electric Stimulation

描述（由申请人提供）：人工耳蜗已经帮助全球超过10万名听障人士恢复了部分听力。随着人工耳蜗性能的不断提高，越来越多的残听患者有资格接受人工耳蜗植入，有些患者已经接受了人工耳蜗植入。我们已经确定了三组具有明显残余声学听力的植入患者：对侧有助听器的患者，在同侧使用联合电声刺激的患者，以及使用植入物抑制耳鸣的患者，可能对侧听力正常。我们建议在这些学科中系统地研究声听觉和电听觉之间的相互作用。我们的三个具体目标是：1。构建准确的电听力音高图2。测量声学和电刺激之间的心理物理相互作用。为探索双峰听力的机制并优化其性能，精确的音高图将使我们能够重建“电谐波”并建立真实的人工耳蜗声学模拟。系统地描述心理物理相互作用是理解机制和最大限度地发挥双峰听力效益的必要条件。这项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的两个最重要的缺点，即音乐感知和背景噪声的语音识别，特别是当噪声是竞争性声音时。

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.