Image: 

Bilateral stimulus optimisation for cochlear implants

Program: 
R2
Project area: 
R2.2: Bilateral sound processing
Project-ID: 
R2.2.2
Project Status: 
Ongoing

Background

Bilateral cochlear implants can provide important advantages over unilateral device use, particularly in noisy situations and when localizing sounds. In normal hearing, the two main cues leading to those benefits are:

  • interaural level differences; and
  • interaural time delays.

While the level cues are well perceived by bilateral cochlear implant users, timing information from the two ears often is not. To date, this is even the case with the Hearing CRC’s advanced Peak Derived Timing sound processing strategy, which was designed specifically with that issue in mind.

Detail

Key objectives in this project are to better understand where the limitations arise in binaural hearing with cochlear implants, alleviate those using novel stimulation methods where possible, or alternatively develop intelligent pre-processing algorithms that may compensate for them.

Additional focus is on improved provision of binaural cues during early hearing development, assessment of bilateral benefits in more realistic sound environments, and sound coding for improved integration of electrical and acoustic stimulation in binaural listeners.

Project leadership

[title]
Dr Richard van Hoesel
 

Project Team

Andrew Vandali, Jorge Mejia, Stephanie Wong, Yanyou Yu

 

Organisations involved

Cochlear Limited
Sydney Cochlear Implant Centre
The Royal Victorian Eye & Ear Hospital
The University of Melbourne
The University of Queensland

Publications from this Project

Title Authors Year of Publicationsort icon
Interaural Time-Delay Sensitivity in Bilateral Cochlear Implant Users: Effects of Pulse Rate, Modulation Rate, and Place of Stimulation van Hoesel, RJM, Jones GL, Litovsky RY 2009
Interaural Time-Delay Sensitivity in Bilateral Cochlear Implant Users: Effects of Pulse Rate, Modulation Rate, and Place of Stimulation van Hoesel, RJM 2009
Relationship of Monaural and Binaural Channel Interaction Effects in Bilateral Cochlear Implant Users Jones, GL, Litovsky RY, van Hoesel RJM 2009
Observer weighting of level and timing cues in bilateral cochlear implant users van Hoesel, RJM 2009
Abnormal Timing Delays in Auditory Brainstem Responses Evoked by Bilateral Cochlear Implant Use in Children Gordon, KA, Valero J, van Hoesel RJM, Papsin BC 2008
Effect of channel interactions on sensitivity to binaural timing cues in electrical hearing Jones, GL, van Hoesel RJM, Litovsky RY 2008
Observer weighting of level and timing cues in bilateral cochlear implant users 2008
Binaural speech unmasking and localization in noise with bilateral cochlear implants using envelope and fine-timing based strategies van Hoesel, RJM, Böhm M, Pesch J̈rg, Vandali A, Battmer RD, Lenarz T 2008
Observer weighting of level and timing cues in bilateral cochlear implant users van Hoesel, RJM 2008
Binaural jitter with cochlear implants, improved interaural time-delay sensitivity, and normal hearing van Hoesel, RJM 2008