How much residual hearing is 'useful' for music perception with cochlear implants?

Full Abstract

AIM: To compare performance on a song recognition task of bilaterally combined electric and acoustic hearing (bimodal stimulation) with electric or acoustic hearing alone. METHODS: Subjects were 14 adults with cochlear implants (CI) who continued to use a hearing aid (HA) in one/both ears. Subjects were asked to identify excerpts from 15 popular songs, which were familiar to them, presented in a random order via a single loudspeaker. Presentation conditions were fixed in order: bimodal, CI alone and then HA alone. Musical excerpts were presented in each condition with and then without lyrics. RESULTS: In a subgroup of subjects (n = 8) with better low-frequency residual hearing (thresholds <85 dB hearing level (HL)), mean scores for bimodal stimulation were significantly greater than for CI alone. In addition, mean 'no lyrics' scores for HA alone (59.7%) were significantly greater than for CI alone (38.8%). All of these subjects considered bimodal stimulation to be the most enjoyable way to listen to music. For the remaining subjects (n = 6) there was no benefit from using bimodal stimulation over CI alone, and the majority of these preferred to listen to music using CI alone. CONCLUSIONS: Bimodal stimulation provides better perception of popular music, particularly melody recognition, compared to CI alone when low-frequency residual hearing is better than 85 dB HL. (c) 2009 S. Karger AG, Basel.

Author information

Author/s: El Fata, Fouad (F); James, Chris J (CJ); Laborde, Marie-Laurence (ML); Fraysse, Bernard (B);

Affiliation: CHU Hôpital Purpan, Toulouse, France.

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: Audiology & neuro-otology (Audiol Neurootol), published in Switzerland. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2009-; vol 14 Suppl 1 (issue ) : pp 14-21

Dates: Created 2009/04/24; Completed 2009/06/25;

PMID: 19390171, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 6/25/2009, IMS Date: 25 Jun 2009 00:00:00)

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