Initial results with simultaneous analog and pulsatile stimulation of the cochlea

An improved method has been developed for the coding of speech information into adequate signals for the stimulation of the auditory nerve. It combines the periodicity principle, which has been applied in single-channel analog stimulation in the Austrian cochlear prosthesis, with the place principle by simultaneous analog stimulation on one channel and pulsatile stimulation on other channels. The second formant frequency determines the place of stimulation for the pulsatile signals. Simultaneous stimulation of several channels can cause the currents emerging from different electrodes to interact because the fluid impedance in the cochlea is small. Therefore, an important aspect of the multichannel strategy is to maintain the temporal pattern transmitted via the analog channel by adequate repetition rates and phase relationships of the pulsatile signals. The signals were processed with finite impulse response digital filters. Vowel identification tests were performed with 6 patients implanted with a 4-channel intracochlear electrode. The test material was spoken by male and female speakers. With proper timing of the pulses the improvement over the single-channel stimulation was significant at the 1% level and this difference was due to a significant increase in second formant recognition.