Graeme Clark Collection

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    A "Combionic Aid": Combined speech processing for a cochlear implant in one ear and speech processing hearing aid in the other ear [Abstract]
    Dooley, Gary J. ; Blamey, Peter J. ; Seligman, Peter M. ; Clark, Graeme M. ( 1993)
    Independent use of a cochlear implant in one ear and a hearing aid in the other is not acceptable for many implant users with some residual hearing. Psychophysical evidence suggests that there are substantial interactions between acoustic and electrical signals including masking and loudness summation. These effects may contribute to the difficulty in using two independent devices and it is desirable to control the parameters of the electrical and acoustical signals far more accurately than is possible with two independent devices with separate microphones. In order to achieve this control we have developed a Combionic aid incorporating an implant and an 'in1planlcompatible' hearing aid controlled from the same speech processor. The new processor is particularly flexible and can implement a wide variety of speech processing strategies for combined acoustic and electrical stimulation. A benchtop prototype has been tested with five patients using a range of different speech tests. In general, patients do better when they use acoustic and electrical information simultaneously than they do with either alone. Some patients on some tests perform significantly better with the bimodal aid than they do with independent hearing aids and implant processors worn together. Wearable devices have now been built and evaluations of these devices are continuing.
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    Psychophysical matching of sensations produced by acoustic and electrical stimulation of the auditory nerve [Abstract]
    Blamey, P. J. ; Dowell, R. C. ; Tong, Y.C. ; Clark, Graeme M. (Monash University Press, 1983)
    The aim of this study was to establish an acoustic model of a multiple-channel cochlear implant that could be used in the development of speech coding strategies. Identical psychophysical tests were carried out with electrical stimuli for two cochlear implant patients and with acoustic stimuli for three normally hearing listeners. Each electrical stimulus was a train of biphasic pulses at a constant rate between 50 and 100 pps directed to one of the 10 electrodes spaced at 1.5mm intervals around the basal turn of the cochlea (Clark et al. 1977). The corresponding acoustic stimulus was a train of noise bursts at a rate equal to the electrical pulse rate. The noise bursts were passed through one of 8 bandpass filters with centre frequencies equally spaced on a logarithmic scale from 1140 to 10880 Hz representing 8 different electrodes.
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    Future directions in the clinical application of multichannel cochlear prostheses [Abstract]
    Dowell, Richard C. ; Blamey, Peter J. ; McDermott, H. J. ; Clark, Graeme M. ( 1992)
    Three main areas of work at the University of Melbourne relating to the clinical application of multichannel cochlear prostheses will be discussed. Speech perception results for 40 children and adolescents implanted with the Nucleus multichannel device will be presented with an analysis of potentially predictive clinical factors. Overall results have shown that 60% of the children have developed useful open-set speech recognition ability without visual cues. Due to the improved speech perception for postlinguistically deafened adult cochlear implant patients, the multichannel implant has become a viable alternative for patients with some useful residual hearing. A "bimodal" speech processor which provides acoustic output for the residual hearing ear and electrical output for the cochlear implant will also be discussed. This device provides a flexible, programmable acoustic processor which can make use of feature coding aspects of the implant processing. The "bimodal" device has also addressed problems of incompatibility of the implant signal with the acoustic signal from conventional hearing aids. Results for the new "Spectral Maxima Speech Processor" (SMSP) will also be presented. The SMSP has shown improved speech perception performance in quiet and in noise when compared with the MSP (MULTIPEAK) system, currently in use with the Nucleus device. Results for four subjects with the SMSP showed mean scores of 57.4% for open-set monosyllabic words in quiet, and 78.7% for open-set sentences in a 10 dB signal-to-noise ratio