Thakkar Tanvi, Anderson Sean R, Kan Alan, Litovsky Ruth Y
Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53705, USA.
School of Engineering, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia.
Brain Sci. 2020 Jun 26;10(6):406. doi: 10.3390/brainsci10060406.
Deafness in both ears is highly disruptive to communication in everyday listening situations. Many individuals with profound deafness receive bilateral cochlear implants (CIs) to gain access to spatial cues used in localization and speech understanding in noise. However, the benefit of bilateral CIs, in particular sensitivity to interaural time and level differences (ITD and ILDs), varies among patients. We measured binaural sensitivity in 46 adult bilateral CI patients to explore the relationship between binaural sensitivity and three classes of patient-related factors: age, acoustic exposure, and electric hearing experience. Results show that ILD sensitivity increased with shorter years of acoustic exposure, younger age at testing, or an interaction between these factors, moderated by the duration of bilateral hearing impairment. ITD sensitivity was impacted by a moderating effect between years of bilateral hearing impairment and CI experience. When age at onset of deafness was treated as two categories (<18 vs. >18 years of age), there was no clear effect for ILD sensitivity, but some differences were observed for ITD sensitivity. Our findings imply that maximal binaural sensitivity is obtained by listeners with a shorter bilateral hearing impairment, a longer duration of CI experience, and potentially a younger age at testing. 198/200.
双耳失聪对日常听力环境中的交流有极大干扰。许多重度失聪患者接受双侧人工耳蜗植入（CI），以获取用于声音定位及噪声环境下语音理解的空间线索。然而，双侧人工耳蜗植入的益处，尤其是对双耳时间差和强度差（ITD和ILD）的敏感度，在患者之间存在差异。我们测量了46名成年双侧人工耳蜗植入患者的双耳敏感度，以探究双耳敏感度与三类患者相关因素之间的关系：年龄、声学暴露及电听觉经验。结果显示，ILD敏感度随着声学暴露年限缩短、测试时年龄较小或这些因素之间的相互作用而增加，且受双侧听力损失时长的调节。ITD敏感度受到双侧听力损失年限与人工耳蜗植入经验之间调节效应的影响。当将耳聋起始年龄分为两类（<18岁与>18岁）时，ILD敏感度没有明显影响，但ITD敏感度存在一些差异。我们的研究结果表明，双侧听力损失时间较短、人工耳蜗植入经验持续时间较长且测试时年龄可能较小的听者可获得最大双耳敏感度。198/200。
