Localization performance correlates with binaural fusion for interaurally mismatched vocoded speech

Suneel, Deepa; Staisloff, Hannah E.; Shayman, Corey S.; Stelmach, Julia; Aronoff, Justin M.

doi:10.1121/1.5001903

Cited by 14 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Another factor that may contribute to the early and consistent benefit observed for CI recipients in the present study is the relatively deep insertion of the MED-EL standard electrode array. Monaural speech perception and binaural processing can be degraded by a shift in the mapping of place to frequency ( Suneel et al., 2017 ; Svirsky, Talavage, Sinha, Neuburger, & Azadpour, 2015 ; Wess et al., 2017 ). For example, studies of dichotic vocoded speech recognition with normal-hearing listeners suggest that performance is detrimentally affected by a mismatch in place to frequency mapping across ears ( Wess et al., 2017 ; Zhou, Li, Yuan, Galvin, & Fu, 2017 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It has also been argued that binaural hearing in patients with a unilateral CI and contralateral acoustic hearing is limited by the asymmetry between ears, particularly with respect to the mapping of frequency to place of excitation in the cochlea ( Wess, Brungart, & Bernstein, 2017 ). These asymmetries could interfere with binaural fusion, which is thought to be a prerequisite for the optimal use of binaural spatial cues ( Kan, Stoelb, Litovsky, & Goupell, 2013 ; Ma, Morris, & Kitterick, 2016 ; Suneel, Staisloff, Shayman, Stelmach, & Aronoff, 2017 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Effects of Cochlear Implantation on Binaural Hearing in Adults With Unilateral Hearing Loss

et al. 2018

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A FDA clinical trial was carried out to evaluate the potential benefit of cochlear implant (CI) use for adults with unilateral moderate-to-profound sensorineural hearing loss. Subjects were 20 adults with moderate-to-profound unilateral sensorineural hearing loss and normal or near-normal hearing on the other side. A MED-EL standard electrode was implanted in the impaired ear. Outcome measures included: (a) sound localization on the horizontal plane (11 positions, −90° to 90°), (b) word recognition in quiet with the CI alone, and (c) masked sentence recognition with the target at 0° and the masker at −90°, 0°, or 90°. This battery was completed preoperatively and at 1, 3, 6, 9, and 12 months after CI activation. Normative data were also collected for 20 age-matched control subjects with normal or near-normal hearing bilaterally. The CI improved localization accuracy and reduced side bias. Word recognition with the CI alone was similar to performance of traditional CI recipients. The CI improved masked sentence recognition when the masker was presented from the front or from the side of normal or near-normal hearing. The binaural benefits observed with the CI increased between the 1- and 3-month intervals but appeared stable thereafter. In contrast to previous reports on localization and speech perception in patients with unilateral sensorineural hearing loss, CI benefits were consistently observed across individual subjects, and performance was at asymptote by the 3-month test interval. Cochlear implant settings, consistent CI use, and short duration of deafness could play a role in this result.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Cochlear Implantation on Binaural Hearing in Adults With Unilateral Hearing Loss

et al. 2018

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“…While rarely a problem in acoustic hearing, the cochlear place of electrical stimulation is determined by physical electrode location. Thus, many BI-CI and most SSD-CI users have frequencymismatched ears (Kawano et al, 1998;Aschendorff et al, 2005;Landsberger et al, 2015), which can reduce binaural benefit for speech understanding (Wess et al, 2017;Sagi et al, 2020) and localization (Suneel et al, 2017). In normal-hearing systems, SOC neurons are tuned to respond to binaural inputs from matched cochlear places.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interaural place-of-stimulation mismatch estimates using CT scans and binaural perception, but not pitch, are consistent in cochlear-implant users

Bernstein

Jensen

Stakhovskaya

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Bilateral cochlear implants (BI-CIs) or a CI for single-sided deafness (SSD; one normally functioning acoustic ear) can partially restore spatial-hearing abilities including sound localization and speech understanding when there are competing sounds. However for these populations, frequency information is not explicitly aligned across the ears, resulting in interaural place-of-stimulation mismatch. This diminishes spatial-hearing abilities because binaural encoding occurs in interaurally frequency-matched neurons. This study examined whether plasticity – the reorganization of central neural pathways over time – can compensate for peripheral interaural place mismatch. We hypothesized differential plasticity across two systems: none for binaural processing but adaptation toward the frequencies delivered by the specific electrodes for sequential pitch perception. Interaural place mismatch was evaluated in 43 human subjects (20 BI-CI and 23 SSD-CI, both sexes) using interaural-time-difference (ITD) discrimination (simultaneous bilateral stimulation), place-pitch ranking (sequential bilateral stimulation), and physical electrode-location estimates from computed-tomography (CT) scans. On average, CT scans revealed relatively little BI-CI interaural place mismatch (26° insertion-angle mismatch), but relatively large SSD-CI mismatch, particularly at the apical end of the array (166° for an electrode tuned to 300 Hz, decreasing to 14° at 7000 Hz). ITD and CT measurements were in agreement, suggesting little binaural-system plasticity to mismatch. The pitch measurements did not agree with the binaural and CT measurements, suggesting plasticity for pitch encoding or procedural biases. The combined results show that binaural processing may be optimized by using CT-scan information, but not pitch measurements, to program the CI frequency allocation to reduce interaural place mismatch.

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“…NH listeners show reduced ILD sensitivity for frequency-mismatched uncorrelated noise bands ( Francart & Wouters, 2007 ) and acoustic pulse trains ( Goupell, Stoelb, Kan, & Litovsky, 2013 ). Vocoder simulations of SSD-CI listening have shown that interaural place mismatch can reduce subjectively reported binaural fusion ( Aronoff, Shayman, Prasad, Suneel, & Stelmach, 2015 ; Suneel, Staisloff, Shayman, Stelmach, & Aronoff, 2017 ), the binaural integration of speech information ( Ma, Morris, & Kitterick, 2016 ), and the ability to perceptually separate concurrent speech ( Wess et al., 2017 ). These results suggest that SSD-CI listeners might benefit if the CI frequency-allocation table (FAT) were adjusted to deliver each acoustic frequency to the electrode that is stimulating the spiral ganglia corresponding to the basilar membrane location that is naturally tuned to that frequency.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interaural Time-Difference Discrimination as a Measure of Place of Stimulation for Cochlear-Implant Users With Single-Sided Deafness

et al. 2018

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Current clinical practice in programming a cochlear implant (CI) for individuals with single-sided deafness (SSD) is to maximize the transmission of speech information via the implant, with the implicit assumption that this will also result in improved spatial-hearing abilities. However, binaural sensitivity is reduced by interaural place-of-stimulation mismatch, a likely occurrence with a standard CI frequency-to-electrode allocation table (FAT). As a step toward reducing interaural mismatch, this study investigated whether a test of interaural-time-difference (ITD) discrimination could be used to estimate the acoustic frequency yielding the best place match for a given CI electrode. ITD-discrimination performance was measured by presenting 300-ms bursts of 100-pulses-per-second electrical pulse trains to a single CI electrode and band-limited pulse trains with variable carrier frequencies to the acoustic ear. Listeners discriminated between two reference intervals (four bursts each with constant ITD) and a moving target interval (four bursts with variable ITD). For 17 out of the 26 electrodes tested across eight listeners, the function describing the relationship between ITD-discrimination performance and carrier frequency had a discernable peak where listeners achieved 70% to 100% performance. On average, this peak occurred 1.15 octaves above the CI manufacturer’s default FAT. ITD discrimination shows promise as a method of estimating the cochlear place of stimulation for a given electrode, thereby providing information to optimize the FAT for SSD-CI listeners.

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Localization performance correlates with binaural fusion for interaurally mismatched vocoded speech

Cited by 14 publications

References 15 publications

Effects of Cochlear Implantation on Binaural Hearing in Adults With Unilateral Hearing Loss

Effects of Cochlear Implantation on Binaural Hearing in Adults With Unilateral Hearing Loss

Interaural place-of-stimulation mismatch estimates using CT scans and binaural perception, but not pitch, are consistent in cochlear-implant users

Interaural Time-Difference Discrimination as a Measure of Place of Stimulation for Cochlear-Implant Users With Single-Sided Deafness

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