Bobby Gibbs, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Removing Assumptions to Optimize Outcomes in Adults with Bilateral Cochlear Implants
The goal of affording listeners who use bilateral cochlear implants (BICIs) the same spatial hearing benefits as listeners with typical acoustic hearing has remained elusive. This talk highlights assumptions about the best stimulation strategies for optimal BICI performance and when these assumptions fail. The first part of the talk will evaluate the assumption that narrow BICI neural stimulation is a requisite for sensitivity to interaural timing differences (ITDs). For single electrode-pair stimulation, broader neural stimulation predicted better ITD sensitivity. The second part will evaluate the assumption that providing larger amounts of binaural information provides better BICI spatial release from masking. ITD cues added to an optimized monaural signal only improved BICI spatial release from masking during non-noisy speech epochs. I argue that larger spatial benefits in BICI listeners are likely to arise when optimization assumptions occur beyond typical acoustic hearing.