ePoster

Spatial hearing with bionic ears

Sarah Buchholz, Jan W Schnupp, Nicole Rosskothen-Kuhl
FENS Forum 2024(2024)
Messe Wien Exhibition & Congress Center, Vienna, Austria

Conference

FENS Forum 2024

Messe Wien Exhibition & Congress Center, Vienna, Austria

Resources

Authors & Affiliations

Sarah Buchholz, Jan W Schnupp, Nicole Rosskothen-Kuhl

Abstract

Spatial hearing, as a fundamental aspect of auditory perception, plays a central role in our daily interactions with the auditory environment. The ability to localize sound and navigate through our environment relies primarily on two binaural cues: interaural time differences (ITDs) and interaural level differences (ILDs). However, for patients with bilateral cochlear implants (biCI), sound localization is a major challenge and ITD sensitivity is particularly poor, with most biCI patients relying almost exclusively on ILDs. Nevertheless, our recent work demonstrates that neonatally deafened rats with temporal precise biCI can develop excellent ITD sensitivity. Here we investigate whether biCI rats can develop both good ITD and ILD sensitivity, which would make our deaf rats an excellent animal model for studying and optimizing binaural hearing with prosthetic ears.Neonatally deafened rats were supplied with biCIs in young adulthood and trained to lateralize temporal precise pulse trains at a pulse rate of 900 pps with ILDs (range of ±6 dB) and ITDs (range ±120 µs). After training, rats were tested on their ILD and ITD sensitivity, which were determined using a psychometric curve fit.In addition to an excellent ITD sensitivity, our biCI rats showed a very good ILD sensitivity with a threshold of, in mean, 1.7 dB. These findings prove that our deaf rats are an excellent animal model for studying binaural hearing with prosthetic ears, which will help us to develop optimized CI stimulation strategies and treatment regimens that should lead to improved auditory perception of human biCI patients.

Unique ID: fens-24/spatial-hearing-with-bionic-ears-2ed8ba77