To recover auditory perception, an array of micro-electrodes that deliver electrical pulses to the auditory nerve is surgically implanted into the cochlea. Similar content being viewed by othersĬochlear implants (CIs) are neuroprostheses that allows hundreds of thousands of severely-to-profoundly hearing-impaired people to hear again.
This enhanced pitch discrimination has the potential to significantly improve music perception, speech recognition, and speech prosody perception in CI users. Furthermore, the device was shown to be highly robust to background noise. In normal-hearing subjects listening to CI simulated audio, we showed that participants were able to discriminate pitch differences at a similar performance level to that achieved by normal-hearing listeners.
The mosaicOne_B extracts pitch information in real-time and presents it via 12 motors that are arranged in ascending pitch along the forearm, with each motor representing a different pitch. In the current study, we take a new approach of providing missing pitch information through haptic stimulation on the forearm, using our new mosaicOne_B device. In recent decades, researchers have attempted to overcome shortcomings in CIs by improving implant technology and surgical techniques, but with limited success. Pitch is critical to speech understanding (particularly in noise), to separating different sounds in complex acoustic environments, and to music enjoyment. However, CIs still have significant limitations, with users having severely impaired pitch perception. The cochlear implant (CI) is the most widely used neuroprosthesis, recovering hearing for more than half a million severely-to-profoundly hearing-impaired people.