Benefits of Combined Acoustic and Electric Hearing for Music and Pitch Perception

Abstract

The total number of cochlear implant (CI) recipients worldwide is now approaching 200,000. Most current CI users attain an adequate ability to understand speech using the implant alone, despite having had at least severe to profound hearing impairment in both ears preoperatively. The satisfactory technical performance of modern CI systems, at least in favorable listening conditions, has resulted in an increasing proportion of CI recipients having usable acoustic hearing postoperatively in one ear, or even in both ears. Many studies have confirmed that, in general, the simultaneous use of acoustic and electric hearing can provide perceptual benefits in comparison to the use of a CI alone. An especially important advantage conferred by the use of acoustic hearing is the potentially improved ability of CI recipients to perceive musical sounds. In particular, the perception of pitch, which is usually not provided adequately by today's CI systems, can be enhanced when sounds are heard acoustically by CI users with sufficient hearing sensitivity.