Some observations about cochlear implants: challenges and future directions

Kathleen F Faulkner,David B Pisoni

doi:10.7243/2052-6946-1-9

Abstract

At the present time, cochlear implantation is the only available medical intervention for patients with profound hearing loss and is considered the “standard of care” for both prelingually deaf infants and post-lingually deaf adults. It has been suggested recently that cochlear implants are one of the greatest accomplishments of auditory neuroscience. Despite the enormous success of cochlear implantation for the treatment of profound deafness, especially in young prelingually deaf children, several pressing unresolved clinical issues have emerged that are at the forefront of current research efforts in the field. In this commentary we briefly review how a cochlear implant works and then discuss five of the most critical clinical and basic research issues: (1) individual differences in outcome and benefit, (2) speech perception in noise, (3) music perception, (4) neuroplasticity and perceptual learning, and (5) binaural hearing.

Highlights

Introduction and backgroundCochlear implantation (CI) is currently the only FDA-approved medical treatment available to partially restore hearing in patients with severe-to-profound sensorineural hearing loss
As of 2011, the NIH reported that 219,000 patients had received CIs worldwide, with 42,600 adults and 28,400 children implanted in the United States [3]
The signal processing carried out by a CI is complex: the range of incoming amplitude levels is first compressed resulting in a reduced dynamic range, and the bandwidths of component frequencies are greatly reduced

Summary

Introduction

Introduction and backgroundCochlear implantation (CI) is currently the only FDA-approved medical treatment available to partially restore hearing in patients with severe-to-profound sensorineural hearing loss. Individual differences in outcome and benefit Many deaf adults and children do very well with their CIs, often approaching the performance of age-matched normal hearing peers under quiet testing conditions, while other patients with CIs obtain little benefit, scoring less than 50%

Results

Conclusion