Simulation of the electrically stimulated auditory nerve.

The electrically generated firing pattern in the fibers of the primary auditory nerve is simulated for a monopolar stimulating electrode. Using an analogous input speech signal, the spiking pattern produced with a single electrode has a simple structure, which unfortunately makes no use of the 2 important coding principles used by nature. By computer simulation, it is possible to obtain an approximation of the firing pattern of the auditory nerve fibers. Listening to the information carried by the compound action potential of the auditory nerve demonstrates that speech signals with dominant high-frequency components are difficult or not possible to discern. This paper presents a strategy for speech processing that seems to improve speech understanding for single-channel implant patients because neural patterns consisting of more temporal information can be generated.