Sound localization and interaural time sensitivity with bilateral cochlear implants

Bilateral cochlear implantation is becoming more common as clinicians attempt to provide better sound-source localization and speech reception in noise for cochlear implant (CI) users. While some improvement over the abilities of monolateral implantees has been documented, bilateral performance for CI users is far from that achieved with normal hearing. Identifying factors that limit bilateral performance has been difficult because little is understood about CI listeners' localization abilities, their sensitivity to interaural cues, and the relationships between them. To better understand bilateral electric hearing, five bilateral CI users' abilities to locate sound sources and their sensitivities to interaural time difference (ITD) were studied in this thesis. Unlike past studies, monolateral and bilateral performance was recorded before and after exposure to daily, bilateral-CI listening using constant- and roving-level stimuli. For constant-level stimuli, increasing bilateral-listening experience improved all subjects' bilateral performance but degraded two subjects' monolateral performance. Using roving-level stimuli, increasing bilateral-listening experience also improved bilateral performance but did not alter monolateral performance.

Department dc:contributor.department

Harvard University--MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Poon, Becky Bikkei

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Donald K. Eddington and H. Steven Colburn.

• Harvard University--MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/35548
• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Identifier URI

http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/35548

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/35548