The Greenwood function shows close alignment with pitch perceived by cochlear implant patients with long, flexible...

The natural, tonotopic frequency distribution of the inner ear is typically described by the Greenwood function, which logarithmically projects the audible frequency spectrum onto the intracochlear basilar membrane. Recent developments in cochlear implant (CI) programming aim to improve sound quality and music perception through consideration of the frequency distribution as described by the Greenwood function when assigning frequency bands to the individual contacts of the electrode array. This approach is commonly referred to as anatomy-based fitting (ABF). However, empirical validation of the Greenwood function to accurately describe pitch as perceived by CI users is lacking.

Twelve CI patients with single-sided deafness (SSD) participated in the study. A pitch matching task was conducted at four different appointments and with two different fitting maps (standard and ABF). At each test appointment, participants were asked to set the frequency of a pure tone presented through a loudspeaker to the pitch perceived when stimulated with the single contacts of the CI electrode array. The cochlear anatomy of the patients was reconstructed based on clinical imaging to derive the location of the stimulating contacts relative to the basilar membrane, allowing for the comparison of the pitch perceived by the patients to the frequency suggested by the Greenwood function for each stimulating contact.

In general, subjective pitch percepts were found to agree well with the frequency suggested by the Greenwood function independent of subject, contact, or applied fitting map. Differences between pitch matches and Greenwood were found to be not statistically significant. At least part of the outcomes of previous studies reporting a basal frequency shift can be explained by the tonotopic mapping functions applied within these studies.

The present results suggest that the Greenwood function is well-suited for representing the tonotopic frequency distribution not only for normal hearing subjects but for CI recipients as well. Further advances in frequency mapping should also take the neural health of the cochlea into account, allowing for additional individualization of frequency mapping in CIs.