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Updated: Jul 10, 2026

Systematic Hearing Performance Evaluation Process for Adolescents with Cochlear Implantation at Early Ages
Published on: March 24, 2023
Auditory Motion Perception by Bilateral Cochlear Implant Users With a Sound Coding Strategy that Synchronizes
Stephen R Dennison1, Lingkai Harry Zhao1, Alan Kan2
1Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA.
None:
Bilateral cochlear implant (BiCI) users do not perform as well as typical hearing listeners when discriminating the direction of sound motion. This is likely due to the lack of synchronization between two independently operating sound processors. The use of bilaterally linked processors can improve the timing of electrical stimulation across the ears. However, these improvements are potentially counteracted by spectral peak-picking in sound coding strategies that may activate different electrodes across the ears, thereby reducing the fidelity of the binaural cues that BiCI users rely on for sound localization. To improve interaural synchrony, a bilateral peak-picking strategy that guarantees coordinated stimulation across the ears was developed and tested using the CCi-MOBILE, a bilaterally linked research processor. The auditory motion tracking abilities of nine BiCI users were measured using the bilateral peak-picking strategy and compared to performance with commercially available, unsynchronized processors. Results showed no effect of bilateral peak-picking. However, a small benefit was observed when tracking the range of motion of a sound when listening with bilateral synchronization which appears to be due to reduced interaural level difference changes with auditory motion. These findings suggest that dynamic auditory perception with BiCI may likely need bilaterally-synchronized hardware.
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