[Refractory recovery function of electrical auditory on the survival auditory nerve in cochlear implant recipients]

To evaluate the cochlear implant recipient's electrical auditory temporal properties in order to estimate the maximum stimulating rate which can be reached when they adopted some speech coding strategies based on time mechanism, such as continuous interleaved sampling (CIS).

Thirty-eight Nucleus CI24 cochlear implant recipients were divided into 4 groups by etiology and history. Their survival auditory nerve fibers' refractory recovery time function was measured via neural response telemetry (NRT). Electrical pulses with the amplitude of recipient's loudest acceptable presentation were stimulated in mono-polar mode, with the width of 25 microseconds and the frequency of 80 Hz. Least-squares regression procedures were used to fit individual recovery functions with the equation A = C + K e(-t/tau), in which tau is the time constant of recovery from refractory state. Statistic analysis showed the relationship between the time constants of individuals and etiology as well as electrode position in the cochlea.

Congenital deaf patient's recovery time constants were shorter than that of postnatal deaf groups of ototoxicity (P = 0.0056) and large vestibular aqueduct syndrome (P = 0.0349). There was no significant difference between the recovery time constants of congenital deaf patients and those of group with long history of deafness. The ANOVA of the recovery time constants of 5th, 10th, 15th electrode showed no significant statistical difference (P > 0.05).

The recovery time constants are related with etiology. In mono-polar mode, the time constants of congenital deafness or subjects with short duration of deafness are shorter than those of postnatal deafness or subjects with long duration of deafness. Time constants do not vary systematically with electrode location along the implanted array. The reciprocal of individual electrode seems to be used in determining the maximum of stimulating rate of CIS strategy and as criteria of choosing the usable channels from 22 electrode bands.