Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 8, 2026

The Miniature Pig: A Large Animal Model for Cochlear Implant Research
Published on: July 28, 2022
A study of hearing aid gain functions based on a nonlinear nonlocal feedforward cochlea model
Yongsam Kim1, Jack Xin, Yingyong Qi
1Institute of Computational Engineering and Sciences (ICES), University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA. kimy@ices.utexas.edu
Abstract:
A model based sound amplification method is proposed and studied to enhance the ability of the hearing impaired. The model consists of mechanical equations on basilar membrane and outer hair cell (OHC). The OHC is described by a nonlinear nonlocal feedforward model. In addition, a perceptive correction is defined to account for the lumped effect of higher level auditory processing, motivated by the intelligibility function of the hearing impaired. The gain functions are computed by matching the impaired model output to the perceptively weighted normal output, and qualitative agreement is achieved with NAL-NL1 prescription on clean signals. For noisy signals, an adaptive gain strategy is proposed based on the signal to noise ratios (SNR) computed by the model. The adaptive gain functions provide less gain as SNRs decrease so that the intelligibility can be higher with the adaptivity.
Related Concept Videos
The Cochlea
Linear Approximation in Frequency Domain
In contrast, nonlinear systems do not inherently possess these properties. However, for small deviations around an operating point, a nonlinear system can often be approximated as linear.
Hair Cells
Gain
Gain:
Suppose Vin is the input and Vout is the output signal to a circuit.
Auditory Pathway
When viewed cross-sectionally, the cochlea reveals the scala vestibuli and scala tympani flanking the...
Bode Plots
A network function represents the ratio of a system's output to its input, with the magnitude and phase angle derived from the complex network function. The decibel logarithmic gain is...