Melody recognition and musical interval perception by deaf subjects stimulated with electrical pulse trains through single cochlear implant electrodes.

The perception of musical pitch was investigated in postlinguistically deaf subjects with cochlear implants. Stimuli consisted of sequences of biphasic electrical pulse trains at rates which represented the tones of the equal-tempered musical scale, delivered at equalized comfortable loudness levels to selected single bipolar electrodes along the array of the Nucleus cochlear implant. Seventeen subjects correctly identified a mean of 44% of rhythmically intact familiar tunes, presented in an open-set paradigm. Three subjects were tested with a closed set of melodies without rhythmic cues. The results showed relatively higher recognition scores at lower pulse rates, although melody recognition remained possible up to rates of approximately 600-800 pulses per second. Stimulation of apical electrodes yielded higher recognition scores than of basal electrodes. The perception of musical intervals, defined as frequency ratios between two trains of stimulus pulse rates, was investigated in an interval intonation labeling experiment, for intervals ranging from a minor 3rd to a major 6th. Within a range of low pulse rates, subjects defined the intervals mediated by electrical pulse rate by the same ratios which govern musical intervals of tonal frequencies in normal-hearing listeners. It may be concluded that temporal cues are sufficient for the mediation of musical pitch, at least for the lower half of the range of fundamental frequencies commonly used in music.