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This study was undertaken to evaluate the musical sounds in cochlear implants (MuSIC) perception test, created to assess the music-listening abilities of cochlear implant (CI) users. Thirty-one unilateral MED-EL COMBI 40+/PULSARCI(100) users and a control group of 67 adults with normal hearing (NH) participated. The MuSIC test comprises six objective and two subjective modules employing approximately 2800 musical files recorded from non-synthesized instruments. A subset was used for comparing CI and NH participants' results. CI and NH participants performed significantly differently on: pitch discrimination, melody discrimination, chord discrimination, instrument detection, and instrument identification. No significant difference in performance was seen on the subtests of rhythm discrimination or dissonance rating and emotion rating. The MuSIC test was found to be a valuable tool for assessing music perception in CI users and NH participants, whether investigating one aspect of music perception in depth or conducting a broad survey of music perception.

Patients with a large vestibular aqueduct (LVA) suffer from a loss of hearing in childhood at an early onset. An acute loss of hearing can be precipitated by minor head trauma. Until now there seems to be no sufficient therapy for stopping the progression of a loss of hearing. It has been shown that a cochlear implantation is a worthwhile procedure if the patient is almost deaf. We report the case of a patient with a bilateral LVA. A loss of hearing was confirmed at the age of 16 months. Exposure to loud noise triggered an acute progression of the hearing loss. At the age of 18 years, LVA was confirmed radiologically, revealing an enlarged endolymphatic duct and sac in MRI scans and an enlarged vestibular aqueduct in the CT scan. We successfully performed a cochlear implant (MED-EL, Combi 40+ flex). Proceeding from this case report, the paper reviews the literature on LVA.