🚀 go-pugleaf

May 2, 1995  (Tuesday) 7:30pm
NE43-773  (545 Tech Sq.)


      Technical Challenges in Improving the Performance of
      Cochlear Implants.

                  Joseph Tierney
                        Research Associate
                              Mass Eye and Ear Infirmary
                        Staff Member
                              Speech Systems Technology Group
                              Lincoln Labs

The cochlea of the normal inner ear provides a transduction from
acoustic inputs to the electric discharges of nerve fibers.
Damage to this organ cannot be ameliorated by conventional
acoustic hearing aids.  In some cases some hearing can be
restored by implanting arrays of electrodes in the undamaged
nerve fibers and then exciting those fibers with electric
currents provided by an external sound processor.

Most deaf people implanted with contemporary cochlear implants
are able to converse readily with lip reading.  While this level
of benefit results in over one hundred implant procedures each
year in the US, only ten to twenty percent of users are able to
communicate fluently by telephone (i.e. without lip reading).
There is a wide range of performance across patients using
cochlear implants; perhaps because of differences in the number
and distribution of surviving nerve fibers.

Improving performance requires 1) designing electrode assemblies
that can be readily positioned for optimum activation of the
undamaged nerve fibers without damaging the cochlea, and 2) sound
processors that will elicit nerve fiber responses that are closer
to those produced by healthy cochlea.

The speaker will review and discuss some of the problems of
increasing speech reception performance, the constraints on doing
so, and some of the technical requirements.

Questions: fhapgood@world.std.com