Binaural benefit with and without a bilateral spectral mismatch in acoustic simulations of cochlear implant...

This study investigated whether a spectral mismatch across ears influences the benefit of redundancy, squelch, and head shadow differently in speech perception using acoustic simulation of bilateral cochlear implant (CI) processing.

Ten normal-hearing subjects participated in the study, and acoustic simulations of CIs were used to test these subjects. Sentence recognition, presented unilaterally and bilaterally, was measured at +5 dB and +10 dB signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) with bilaterally matched and mismatched conditions. Unilateral and bilateral CIs were simulated using 8-channel sine wave vocoders. Binaural spectral mismatch was introduced by changing the relative simulated insertion depths across ears. Subjects were tested while listening with headphones; head-related transfer functions were applied before the vocoder processing to preserve natural interaural level and time differences.

For both SNRs, greater and more consistent binaural benefit of squelch and redundancy occurred for the matched condition whereas binaural interference of squelch and redundancy occurred for the mismatched condition. However, significant binaural benefit of head shadow existed irrespective of spectral mismatches and SNRs.

The results suggest that bilateral spectral mismatch may have a negative impact on the binaural benefit of squelch and redundancy for bilateral CI users. The results also suggest that clinical mapping should be carefully administrated for bilateral CI users to minimize the difference in spectral patterns between the two CIs.