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Updated: Apr 25, 2026
Electrically Evoked Stapedius Reflex Measurements in Cochlear Implantation and Its Application in the Postoperative Fitting Process
Published on: June 21, 2024
Binaural enhancement for bilateral cochlear implant users
1Department of Communication Science and Disorders, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.
Objectives:
Bilateral cochlear implant (BCI) users receive limited binaural cues and, thus, show little improvement to speech intelligibility from spatial cues. The feasibility of a method for enhancing the binaural cues available to BCI users is investigated. This involved extending interaural differences of levels, which typically are restricted to high frequencies, into the low-frequency region.
Design:
Speech intelligibility was measured in BCI users listening over headphones and with direct stimulation, with a target talker presented to one side of the head in the presence of a masker talker on the other side. Spatial separation was achieved by applying either naturally occurring binaural cues or enhanced cues.
Results:
In this listening configuration, BCI patients showed greater speech intelligibility with the enhanced binaural cues than with naturally occurring binaural cues.
Conclusions:
In some situations, it is possible for BCI users to achieve greater speech intelligibility when binaural cues are enhanced by applying interaural differences of levels in the low-frequency region.
