New Cochlear Implant Approach Harnesses Cell Phone Scheme to Improve Melody Perception

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Newswise - May 18, 2011

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<http://www.newswise.com/articles/making-beautiful-music-new-cochlear-implan

t-approach-harnesses-cell-phone-scheme-to-improve-melody-perception> Making

Beautiful Music: New Cochlear Implant Approach Harnesses Cell Phone Scheme

to Improve Melody Perception

Source: <http://www.newswise.com/institutions/view/1045/%20> American

Institute of Physics (AIP)

Newswise - College Park, Md. (May 18, 2011) -- For people with hearing

problems, a cochlear implant can transform their world. The tiny computer

chip is surgically implanted into the skull to simulate the work done by the

busy hairs in the inner ear to process sounds-and the implants perform very

well rendering spoken language. Melody perception, however, remains a

challenge. But a new system that adapts cellphone sound processing appears

to bring cochlear implant technology closer to offering the best of both

acoustical worlds: speech and music.

The research on this new approach will be presented at the Acoustical

Society of America's 161st annual meeting in Seattle, Wash. Compared with

the conventional cochlear-implant sound sampling strategy, the new scheme

significantly improved melody perception. In a test of nine subjects wearing

cochlear implants who were asked to identify 10 melodies, results showed

10-20 percent improvement.

Notes lead researcher Fan-Gang Zeng, Ph.D., research director of the Hearing

and Speech Lab at University of California, Irvine: " One potential

application of this scheme is to one day integrate cochlear implants with

smartphones so that future users can not only get better performance, but

also seamless communication. Imagine one device that helps you hear and

connects all. "

In the current cochlear implant pitch-encoding schemes for rendering melody,

the original sound signals are significantly altered. This produces

potentially detrimental effects on speech perception, which means

improvement in hearing music comes at a cost to hearing speech. To overcome

this, the new approach takes advantage of spectral constancy, which refers

to unaltered tone-quality perception. It is achieved by preserving the

spatial position voiced sounds occupy in a given timeframe, while altering

the timeframe of pitch cycles. This minimizes distortion of the sound

signals of both speech and music.

The presentation, " Using spectral constancy to encode temporal pitch and

improve cochlear implant melody perception, " by Zeng et al is in the morning

session on Friday, May 27 in Grand Ballroom C.

Abstract: <http://asa.aip.org/web2/asa/abstracts/search.may11/asa1190.html>

http://asa.aip.org/web2/asa/abstracts/search.may11/asa1190.html

or: http://tinyurl.com/3obcqk6