The nucleus implant: rehabilitation and results

Improvements in hearing and speech perception were studied in three postlingually deaf adults who had received a Nucleus multi-channel intracochlear implant. Over the course of one year the repeated testing of hearing and speech perception were interspersed with sessions of speech processor adjustment, rehabilitation and video recording of performance. The data indicated that, while subjects were able to discriminate simple changes in acoustic patterns (e.g., noise versus voice), they were unable to recognize words taken from an open set. Learning effects were as high as 20-30%. Psychophysical experiments indicated a wide range of performance across individuals, in some instances close to values observed for individuals with normal hearing.