Adult Users of the Oticon Medical Neuro Cochlear Implant System Benefit from Beamforming in the High Frequencies

Abstract

The Oticon Medical Neuro cochlear implant system includes the modes Opti Omni and Speech Omni, the latter providing beamforming (i.e., directional selectivity) in the high frequencies. Two studies compared sentence identification scores of adult cochlear implant users with Opti Omni and Speech Omni. In Study 1, a double-blind longitudinal crossover study, 12 new users trialed Opti Omni or Speech Omni (random allocation) for three months, and their sentence identification in quiet and noise (+10 dB signal-to-noise ratio) with the trialed mode were measured. The same procedure was repeated for the second mode. In Study 2, a single-blind study, 11 experienced users performed a speech identification task in quiet and at relative signal-to-noise ratios ranging from −3 to +18 dB with Opti Omni and Speech Omni. The Study 1 scores in quiet and in noise were significantly better with Speech Omni than with Opti Omni. Study 2 scores were significantly better with Speech Omni than with Opti Omni at +6 and +9 dB signal-to-noise ratios. Beamforming in the high frequencies, as implemented in Speech Omni, leads to improved speech identification in medium levels of background noise, where cochlear implant users spend most of their day.

Impact of SNR, peripheral auditory sensitivity, and central cognitive profile on the psychometric relation between pupillary response and speech performance in CI users

“…Auditory stimuli were Castilian Spanish sentences from the Hearing in Noise Sentence Test (HINT), embedded in speech-shaped noise matching the long-term spectrum of the sentence materials. Although the present study aims to target the complete psychometric range as in Ohlenforst et al (2017Ohlenforst et al ( , 2018, only a subset of SNRs was chosen because typical daily listening scenarios have SNRs ranging from 5 to 15 dB SNR (Smeds et al, 2015) and CI users show different ranges and slopes of their speech psychometric functions (Bergeron and Hotton, 2016;Cordeiro et al, 2021). CI users also experience near-floor performance in negative SNRs, therefore not useful to inform on the psychometric shape of intelligibility and effort.…”