Borjigin Agudemu, Dennison Stephen R, Thakkar Tanvi, Kan Alan, Litovsky Ruth Y
University of Wisconsin-Madison (Madison, WI, USA).
MED-EL Corporation (Durham, NC, USA).
bioRxiv. 2024 Dec 27:2024.12.27.627652. doi: 10.1101/2024.12.27.627652.
Growing numbers of children and adults who are deaf are eligible to receive cochlear implants (CI), which provide access to everyday sound. CIs in both ears (bilateral CIs or BiCIs) are becoming standard of care in many countries. However, their effectiveness is limited because they do not adequately restore the acoustic cues essential for sound localization, particularly interaural time differences (ITDs) at low frequencies. The cochlea, the auditory sensory organ, typically transmits ITDs more effectively at the apical region, which is specifically "tuned" to low frequencies. We hypothesized that effective restoration of robust ITD perception through electrical stimulation with BiCIs depends on targeting cochlear locations that transmit information most effectively. Importantly, we show that these locations can occur anywhere along the cochlea, even on the opposite end of the frequency map from where ITD cues are most dominantly encoded in an acoustic hearing system.
越来越多的失聪儿童和成人有资格接受人工耳蜗植入（CI），这使他们能够听到日常声音。双耳人工耳蜗植入（双侧人工耳蜗植入或BiCI）在许多国家正成为标准治疗方案。然而，其效果有限，因为它们无法充分恢复声音定位所必需的声学线索，尤其是低频下的双耳时间差（ITD）。耳蜗作为听觉感觉器官，通常在顶端区域能更有效地传递ITD，该区域专门“调谐”到低频。我们推测，通过双侧人工耳蜗植入进行电刺激有效恢复强大的ITD感知能力，取决于靶向耳蜗中最有效地传递信息的位置。重要的是，我们表明这些位置可能出现在耳蜗的任何位置，甚至在频率图上与声学听觉系统中ITD线索最主要编码位置相对的另一端。
