Electro-Haptic Enhancement of Spatial Hearing in Cochlear Implant Users

Cochlear implants (CIs) have enabled hundreds of thousands of profoundly hearing-impaired people to perceive sounds by electrically stimulating the auditory nerve. However, CI users are often very poor at locating sounds, which leads to impaired sound segregation and threat detection. We provided mi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific reports 2020-01, Vol.10 (1), p.1621-1621, Article 1621
Main Authors: Fletcher, Mark D., Cunningham, Robyn O., Mills, Sean R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
631/378/2619
692/308/575
Acoustic Stimulation - methods
Adult
Auditory nerve
Cochlea
Cochlear Implantation - methods
Cochlear Implants
Cochlear Nerve
Female
Hearing
Hearing - physiology
Hearing Tests - methods
Humanities and Social Sciences
Humans
Information processing
Male
Middle Aged
multidisciplinary
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Sound Localization - physiology
Speech Perception - physiology
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Description
Summary:Cochlear implants (CIs) have enabled hundreds of thousands of profoundly hearing-impaired people to perceive sounds by electrically stimulating the auditory nerve. However, CI users are often very poor at locating sounds, which leads to impaired sound segregation and threat detection. We provided missing spatial hearing cues through haptic stimulation to augment the electrical CI signal. We found that this “electro-haptic” stimulation dramatically improved sound localisation. Furthermore, participants were able to effectively integrate spatial information transmitted through these two senses, performing better with combined audio and haptic stimulation than with either alone. Our haptic signal was presented to the wrists and could readily be delivered by a low-cost wearable device. This approach could provide a non-invasive means of improving outcomes for the vast majority of CI users who have only one implant, without the expense and risk of a second implantation.
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/s41598-020-58503-8