Abstract
Cochlear implants (CIs) have been remarkably successful at restoring hearing in severely-to-profoundly hearing-impaired individuals. However, users often struggle to deconstruct complex auditory scenes with multiple simultaneous sounds, which can result in reduced music enjoyment and impaired speech understanding in background noise. Hearing aid users often have similar issues, though these are typically less acute. Several recent studies have shown that haptic stimulation can enhance CI listening by giving access to sound features that are poorly transmitted through the electrical CI signal. This “electro-haptic stimulation” improves melody recognition and pitch discrimination, as well as speech-in-noise performance and sound localization. The success of this approach suggests it could also enhance auditory perception in hearing-aid users and other hearing-impaired listeners. This review focuses on the use of haptic stimulation to enhance music perception in hearing-impaired listeners. Music is prevalent throughout everyday life, being critical to media such as film and video games, and often being central to events such as weddings and funerals. It represents the biggest challenge for signal processing, as it is typically an extremely complex acoustic signal, containing multiple simultaneous harmonic and inharmonic sounds. Signal-processing approaches developed for enhancing music perception could therefore have significant utility for other key issues faced by hearing-impaired listeners, such as understanding speech in noisy environments. This review first discusses the limits of music perception in hearing-impaired listeners and the limits of the tactile system. It then discusses the evidence around integration of audio and haptic stimulation in the brain. Next, the features, suitability, and success of current haptic devices for enhancing music perception are reviewed, as well as the signal-processing approaches that could be deployed in future haptic devices. Finally, the cutting-edge technologies that could be exploited for enhancing music perception with haptics are discussed. These include the latest micro motor and driver technology, low-power wireless technology, machine learning, big data, and cloud computing. New approaches for enhancing music perception in hearing-impaired listeners could substantially improve quality of life. Furthermore, effective haptic techniques for providing complex sound information could offer a non-invasive, affordable means for enhancing listening more broadly in hearing-impaired individuals.
Highlights
Cochlear implants (CIs) recover hearing for severely-toprofoundly hearing-impaired individuals by electrically stimulating the cochlea
This review first assesses the limits of music perception in hearing-impaired listeners, the suitability of the tactile system for transferring musical signals, and the evidence that audio and haptic inputs are integrated in the brain
It has been shown that haptic devices can be highly effective at providing intensity (Fletcher and Zgheib, 2020; Fletcher et al, 2020a, 2021a,b) and frequency information (Fletcher et al, 2020c), and can support perception of complex signals such as speech (Huang et al, 2017; Fletcher et al, 2018, 2019, 2020b)
Summary
Cochlear implants (CIs) recover hearing for severely-toprofoundly hearing-impaired individuals by electrically stimulating the cochlea. This review will focus on the use of haptic stimulation to enhance music perception in hearing-impaired listeners. This review first assesses the limits of music perception in hearing-impaired listeners, the suitability of the tactile system for transferring musical signals, and the evidence that audio and haptic inputs are integrated in the brain.
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