Agudemu Borjigin, Ph.D.
Post-doctoral Fellow
Binaural Hearing and Speech Lab, Waisman Center
Breaking Through the Noise: Enhancing Cochlear Implants for Real-World Listening
Cochlear implants (CIs) are the most successful neural prostheses, restoring hearing for over a million individuals with severe to profound sensorineural hearing loss and enabling most recipients to achieve satisfactory speech intelligibility in quiet settings. However, CI users continue to face significant challenges in understanding speech in noisy, everyday environments. My primary research focuses on identifying the factors contributing to these listening difficulties and developing solutions to address them. Specifically, I have been investigating the potential benefits of incorporating temporal fine structure (TFS) encoding into CI sound coding strategies. TFS, a fundamental component of all sounds, is currently absent in most CI sound coding strategies. Beyond improving sound coding strategy by introducing TFS encoding, I have also explored deep learning-based approaches to eliminate noise interference before it reaches the sound coding stage of CIs. My work in enhancing both the sound coding and pre-processing stages has demonstrated significant improvements in the auditory capabilities of CI users. These advancements hold promise for informing the next generation of CI technology, aiming to provide CI users with a better auditory experience, particularly in complex and noisy listening environments.