Psychophysics of multiple-channel stimulation

Abstract

Eight patients implanted with multiple-channel cochlear prostheses have displayed good discrimination of sound sensations elicited at different sites within the cochlea. All patients rank the sensations from "sharp" to "dull" in an order which corresponds with basal to apical position in the cochlea. Detailed psychophysical studies have been carried out on two patients. These showed that discrimination of rate of (pulsatile) stimulation is good for frequencies up to 300 Hz and falls off sharply for frequencies above this. Electrode transitions (changes in position along the cochlea) are well discriminated for fast changes (25 msec), whereas rate transitions are not well discriminated for changes faster than 100 msec. From these results a speech processing strategy was formulated where second formant information is mapped to position in the cochlea and fundamental frequency mapped to rate of stimulation. Vowel and consonant confusion studies show consistent results for all patients using this processing strategy. A study involving two electrode stimuli demonstrated the possibility of presenting first formant information in addition to the second formant and fundamental frequency.