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We measured the sustained neural response to electrical stimulation by a cochlear implant (CI). To do so, we interleaved two stimuli with frequencies F1 and F2 Hz and recorded a neural distortion response (NDR) at F2-F1 Hz. We show that, because any one time point contains only the F1 or F2 stimulus, the instantaneous nonlinearities typical of electrical artefact should not produce distortion at this frequency. However, if the stimulus is smoothed, such as by charge integration at the nerve membrane, subsequent (neural) nonlinearities can produce a component at F2-F1 Hz. We stimulated a single CI electrode with interleaved sinusoids or interleaved amplitude-modulated pulse trains such that F2 = 1.5F1, and found no evidence for an NDR when F2-F1 was between 90 and 120 Hz. However, interleaved amplitude-modulated pulse trains with F2-F1~40 Hz revealed a substantial NDR with a group delay of about 45 ms, consistent with a thalamic and/or cortical response. The NDR could be measured even from recording electrodes adjacent to the implant and at the highest pulse rates (> 4000 pps) used clinically. We then measured the selectivity of this sustained response by presenting F1 and F2 to different electrodes and at different between-electrode distances. This revealed a broad tuning that, we argue, reflects the overlap between the excitation elicited by the two electrodes. Our results also provide a glimpse of the neural nonlinearity in the auditory system, unaffected by the biomechanical cochlear nonlinearities that accompany acoustic stimulation. Several potential clinical applications of our findings are discussed. ispartof: JARO-JOURNAL OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR RESEARCH IN OTOLARYNGOLOGY vol:22 issue:2 pages:141-159 ispartof: location:United States status: published

Variations in neural health along the cochlea can degrade the spectral and temporal representation of sounds conveyed by cochlear implants (CIs). We evaluated and compared one electrophysiological measure and two behavioural measures that have been proposed as estimates of neural health patterns, in order to explore the extent to which the different measures provide converging and consistent neural health estimates. All measures were obtained from the same 11 users of the Cochlear Corporation CI. The two behavioural measures were multipulse integration (MPI) and the polarity effect (PE), both measured on each of seven electrodes per subject. MPI was measured as the difference between thresholds at 80 pps and 1000 pps, and PE as the difference in thresholds between cathodic- and anodic-centred quadraphasic (QP) 80-pps pulse trains. It has been proposed that good neural health corresponds to a large MPI and to a large negative PE (lower thresholds for cathodic than anodic pulses). The electrophysiological measure was the effect of interphase gap (IPG) on the offset of the ECAP amplitude growth function (AGF), which has been correlated with spiral ganglion neuron density in guinea pigs. This ‘IPG offset’ was obtained on the same subset of electrodes used for the behavioural measures. Despite high test–retest reliability, there were no significant correlations between the neural health estimates for either within-subject comparisons across the electrode array, or between-subject comparisons of the means. A phenomenological model of a population of spiral ganglion neurons was then used to investigate physiological mechanisms that might underlie the different neural health estimates. The combined experimental and modelling results provide evidence that PE, MPI and IPG offset may reflect different characteristics of the electrode-neural interface.

Temporal processing by cochlear implant listeners is degraded and is affected by auditory deprivation. The fast-acting Kv3.1 potassium channel is important for sustained temporally accurate firing and is also susceptible to deprivation, the effects of which can be partially restored in animals by the molecule AUT00063. We report the results of a randomised placebo-controlled double-blind study on psychophysical tests of the effects of AUT00063 on temporal processing by CI listeners. The study measured the upper limit of temporal pitch, gap detection, and discrimination of low rates (centred on 120 pps) for monopolar pulse trains presented to an apical electrode. The upper limit was measured using the optimally efficient midpoint comparison (MPC) pitch-ranking procedure; thresholds were obtained for the other two measures using an adaptive procedure. Twelve CI users (MedEl and Cochlear) were tested before and after two periods of AUT00063 or placebo in a within-subject crossover study. No significant differences occurred between post-drug and post-placebo conditions. This absence of effect occurred despite high test-retest reliability for all three measures, obtained by comparing performance on the two baseline visits, and despite the demonstrated sensitivity of the measures to modest changes in temporal processing obtained in other studies from our laboratory. Hence, we have no evidence that AUT00063 improves temporal processing for the doses and patient population employed.

Forward masking of a sinusoidal signal is determined not only by the masker's power spectrum but also by its phase spectrum. Specifically, when the phase spectrum is such that the output of an auditory filter centred on the signal has a highly modulated ("peaked") envelope, there is less masking than when that envelope is flat. This finding has been attributed to non-linearities, such as compression, reducing the average neural response to maskers that produce more peaked auditory filter outputs (Carlyon and Datta, J Acoust Soc Am 101:3636-3647, 1997). Here we evaluate an alternative explanation proposed by Wotcjzak and Oxenham (Wojtczak and Oxenham, J Assoc Res Otolaryngol 10:595-607, 2009). They reported a masker phase effect for 6-kHz signals when the masker components were at least an octave below the signal frequency. Wotcjzak and Oxenham argued that this effect was inconsistent with cochlear compression, and, because it did not occur at lower signal frequencies, was also inconsistent with more central compression. It was instead attributed to activation of the efferent system reducing the response to the subsequent probe. Here, experiment 1 replicated their main findings. Experiment 2 showed that the phase effect on off-frequency forward masking is similar at signal frequencies of 2 and 6 kHz, provided that one equates the number of components likely to interact within an auditory filter centred on the signal, thereby roughly equating the effect of masker phase on the peakiness of that filter output. Experiment 3 showed that for some subjects, masker phase also had a strong influence on off-frequency backward masking of the signal, and that the size of this effect correlated across subjects with that observed in forward masking. We conclude that the masker phase effect is mediated mainly by cochlear non-linearities, with a possible additional effect of more central compression. The data are not consistent with a role for the efferent system.

Cochlear implants (CIs) convey fundamental-frequency information using primarily temporal cues. However, temporal pitch perception in CI users is weak and, when measured using rate discrimination tasks, deteriorates markedly as the rate increases beyond 300 pulses-per-second. Rate pitch may be weak because the electrical stimulation of the surviving neural population of the implant recipient may not allow accurate coding of inter-pulse time intervals. If so, this phenomenon should prevent listeners from detecting when a pulse train is physically temporally jittered. Performance in a jitter detection task was compared to that in a rate-pitch discrimination task. Stimuli were delivered using direct stimulation in cochlear implants, on a mid-array and an apical electrode, and at two different rates (100 and 300 pps). Average performance on both tasks was worse at the higher pulse rate and did not depend on electrode. However, there was a large variability across and within listeners that did not correlate between the two tasks, suggesting that rate-pitch judgement and regularity detection are to some extent limited by task-specific processes. Simulations with filtered pulse trains presented to NH listeners yielded broadly similar results, except that, for the rate discrimination task, the difference between performance with 100- and 300-pps base rates was smaller than observed for CI users.

Cochlear implant (CI) users have poor temporal pitch perception, as revealed by two key outcomes of rate discrimination tests: (i) rate discrimination thresholds (RDTs) are typically larger than the corresponding frequency difference limen for pure tones in normal hearing listeners, and (ii) above a few hundred pulses per second (i.e. the “upper limit” of pitch), CI users cannot discriminate further increases in pulse rate. Both RDTs at low rates and the upper limit of pitch vary across listeners and across electrodes in a given listener. Here, we compare across-electrode and across-subject variation in these two measures with the variation in performance on another temporal processing task, gap detection, in order to explore the limitations of temporal processing in CI users. RDTs were obtained for 4–5 electrodes in each of 10 Advanced Bionics CI users using two interleaved adaptive tracks, corresponding to standard rates of 100 and 400 pps. Gap detection was measured using the adaptive procedure and stimuli described by Bierer et al. (JARO 16:273-284, 2015), and for the same electrodes and listeners as for the rate discrimination measures. Pitch ranking was also performed using a mid-point comparison technique. There was a marginal across-electrode correlation between gap detection and rate discrimination at 400 pps, but neither measure correlated with rate discrimination at 100 pps. Similarly, there was a highly significant across-subject correlation between gap detection and rate discrimination at 400, but not 100 pps, and these two correlations differed significantly from each other. Estimates of low-rate sensitivity and of the upper limit of pitch, obtained from the pitch ranking experiment, correlated well with rate discrimination for the 100- and 400-pps standards, respectively. The results are consistent with the upper limit of rate discrimination sharing a common basis with gap detection. There was no evidence that this limitation also applied to rate discrimination at lower rates.

Behavioral measures of spatial selectivity in cochlear implants are important both for guiding the programing of individual users’ implants and for the evaluation of different stimulation methods. However, the methods used are subject to a number of confounding factors that can contaminate estimates of spatial selectivity. These factors include off-site listening, charge interactions between masker and probe pulses in interleaved masking paradigms, and confusion effects in forward masking. We review the effects of these confounds and discuss methods for minimizing them. We describe one such method in which the level of a 125-pps masker is adjusted so as to mask a 125-pps probe, and where the masker and probe pulses are temporally interleaved. Five experiments describe the method and evaluate the potential roles of the different potential confounding factors. No evidence was obtained for off-site listening of the type observed in acoustic hearing. The choice of the masking paradigm was shown to alter the measured spatial selectivity. For short gaps between masker and probe pulses, both facilitation and refractory mechanisms had an effect on masking; this finding should inform the choice of stimulation rate in interleaved masking experiments. No evidence for confusion effects in forward masking was revealed. It is concluded that the proposed method avoids many potential confounds but that the choice of method should depend on the research question under investigation.

International audience; A series of experiments investigated the effects of asymmetric current waveforms on the perception of place and temporal pitch cues. The asymmetric waveforms were trains of pseudomonophasic (PS) pulses consisting of a short, high-amplitude phase followed by a longer (and lower amplitude) opposite-polarity phase. When such pulses were presented in a narrow bipolar ("BP+1") mode and with the first phase anodic relative to the most apical electrode (so-called PSA pulses), pitch was lower than when the first phase was anodic re the more basal electrode. For a pulse rate of 12 pulses per second (pps), pitch was also lower than with standard symmetric biphasic pulses in either monopolar or bipolar mode. This suggests that PSA pulses can extend the range of place-pitch percepts available to cochlear implant listeners by focusing the spread of excitation in a more apical region than common stimulation techniques. Temporal pitch was studied by requiring subjects to pitch-rank single-channel pulse trains with rates ranging from 105 to 1,156 pps; this task was repeated at several intra-cochlear stimulation sites and using both symmetric and pseudomonophasic pulses. For PSA pulses presented to apical electrodes, the upper limit of temporal pitch was significantly higher than that for all the other conditions, averaging 713 pps. Measures of discriminability obtained using the method of constant stimuli indicated that this pitch percept was probably weak. However, a multidimensional scaling study showed that the percept associated with a rate change, even at high rates, was orthogonal to that of a place change and therefore reflected a genuine change in the temporal pattern of neural activity.

International audience; Four cochlear implant users, having normal hearing in the unimplanted ear, compared the pitches of electrical and acoustic stimuli presented to the two ears. Comparisons were between 1,031-pps pulse trains and pure tones or between 12 and 25-pps electric pulse trains and bandpass-filtered acoustic pulse trains of the same rate. Three methods-pitch adjustment, constant stimuli, and interleaved adaptive procedures-were used. For all methods, we showed that the results can be strongly influenced by non-sensory biases arising from the range of acoustic stimuli presented, and proposed a series of checks that should be made to alert the experimenter to those biases. We then showed that the results of comparisons that survived these checks do not deviate consistently from the predictions of a widely-used cochlear frequency-to-place formula or of a computational cochlear model. We also demonstrate that substantial range effects occur with other widely used experimental methods, even for normal-hearing listeners.

Three experiments studied discrimination of changes in the rate of electrical pulse trains by cochlear-implant (CI) users and investigated the effect of manipulations that would be expected to substantially affect the pattern of auditory nerve (AN) activity. Experiment 1 used single-electrode stimulation and tested discrimination at baseline rates between 100 and 500 pps. Performance was generally similar for stimulus durations of 200 and 800 ms, and, for the longer duration, for stimuli that were gated on abruptly or with 300-ms ramps. Experiment 2 used a similar procedure and found that no substantial benefit was obtained by the addition of background 5000-pps "conditioning" pulses. Experiment 3 used a pitch-ranking procedure and found that the range of rates over which pitch increased with increasing rate was not greater for multiple-electrode than for single-electrode stimulation. The results indicate that the limitation on pulse-rate discrimination by CI users, at high baseline rates, is not specific to a particular temporal pattern of the AN response. © 2010 Acoustical Society of America.

International audience; Most contemporary cochlear implants (CIs) stimulate the auditory nerve with trains of amplitude-modulated, symmetric biphasic pulses. Although both polarities of a pulse can depolarize the nerve fibers and generate action potentials, it remains unknown which of the two (positive or negative) phases has the stronger effect. Understanding the effects of pulse polarity will help to optimize the stimulation protocols and to deliver the most relevant information to the implant listeners. Animal experiments have shown that cathodic (negative) current flows are more effective than anodic (positive) ones in eliciting neural responses, and this finding has motivated the development of novel speech-processing algorithms. In this study, we show electrophysiologically and psychophysically that the human auditory system exhibits the opposite pattern, being more sensitive to anodic stimulation. We measured electrically evoked compound action potentials in CI listeners for phase-separated pulses, allowing us to tease out the responses to each of the two opposite-polarity phases. At an equal stimulus level, the anodic phase yielded the larger response. Furthermore, a measure of psychophysical masking patterns revealed that this polarity difference was still present at higher levels of the auditory system and was therefore not solely due to antidromic propagation of the neural response. This finding may relate to a particular orientation of the nerve fibers relative to the electrode or to a substantial degeneration and demyelination of the peripheral processes. Potential applications to improve CI speech-processing strategies are discussed.

International audience; Existing cochlear implants stimulate the auditory nerve with trains of symmetric biphasic (BP) pulses. Recent data have shown that modifying the pulse shape, while maintaining charge balance, may be beneficial in terms of reducing power consumption, increasing dynamic range, and limiting channel interactions. We measured thresholds and most comfortable levels (MCLs) for various 99-pulses-per-second (pps) stimuli. "Pseudomonophasic (PS)" pulses consist of a brief phase of one polarity followed immediately by a longer and lower-amplitude phase of the opposite polarity. We focused on a novel variant of PS pulses, termed the "delayed pseudomonophasic (DPS)" stimulus, in which the longer phase is presented midway between the short phases of two consecutive pulses. DPS pulse trains produced thresholds that were more than 10 dB lower than those obtained with BP pulses. This reduction was much greater than the 0- to 3-dB drop obtained with PS pulses and was still more than 6 dB when a pulse rate of 892 pps was used. A study of the relative contributions of the two phases of DPS suggested that the short, high-amplitude phase dominated the perceived loudness. This study showed major threshold and MCL reductions using a DPS stimulus compared to the widely used BP stimulus. These reductions, which were predicted by a simple linear filter model, might lead to considerable power savings if implemented in a cochlear implant speech processor.

Summary Biologically salient sounds, including speech, are rarely heard in isolation. Our brains must therefore organize the input arising from multiple sources into separate “streams” and, in the case of speech, map the acoustic components of the target signal onto meaning. These auditory and linguistic processes have traditionally been considered to occur sequentially and are typically studied independently [1, 2]. However, evidence that streaming is modified or reset by attention [3], and that lexical knowledge can affect reports of speech sound identity [4, 5], suggests that higher-level factors may influence perceptual organization. In two experiments, listeners heard sequences of repeated words or acoustically matched nonwords. After several presentations, they reported that the initial /s/ sound in each syllable formed a separate stream; the percept then fluctuated between the streamed and fused states in a bistable manner. In addition to measuring these verbal transformations, we assessed streaming objectively by requiring listeners to detect occasional targets—syllables containing a gap after the initial /s/. Performance was better when streaming caused the syllables preceding the target to transform from words into nonwords, rather than from nonwords into words. Our results show that auditory stream formation is influenced not only by the acoustic properties of speech sounds, but also by higher-level processes involved in recognizing familiar words., Highlights • Linguistic processing affects perceptual organization • The acoustic elements of words fuse more readily than those of nonwords • Bistable speech sounds share dynamics with other ambiguous perceptual objects

Cochlear implant (CI) users usually exhibit marked across-electrode differences in detection thresholds with "focused" modes of stimulation, such as partial-tripolar (pTP) mode. This may reflect differences either in local neural survival or in the distance of the electrodes from the modiolus. To shed light on these two explanations, we compared stimulus-detection thresholds and gap-detection thresholds (GDTs) at comfortably loud levels for at least four electrodes in each of ten Advanced Bionics CI users, using 1031-pps pulse trains. The electrodes selected for each user had a wide range of stimulus-detection thresholds in pTP mode. We also measured across-electrode variations in both stimulus-detection and gap-detection tasks in monopolar (MP) mode. Both stimulus-detection and gap-detection thresholds correlated across modes. However, there was no significant correlation between stimulus-detection and gap-detection thresholds in either mode. Hence, gap-detection thresholds likely tap a source of across-electrode variation additional to, or different from, that revealed by stimulus-detection thresholds. Stimulus-detection thresholds were significantly lower for apical than for basal electrodes in both modes; this was only true for gap detection in pTP mode. Finally, although the across-electrode standard deviation in stimulus-detection thresholds was greater in pTP than in MP mode, the reliability of these differences--assessed by dividing the across-electrode standard deviation by the standard deviation across adaptive runs for each electrode--was similar for the two modes; this metric was also similar across modes for gap detection. Hence across-electrode differences can be revealed using clinically available MP stimulation, with a reliability comparable to that observed with focused stimulation.