The overall goals of the currently funded competing renewal grant P50 DC000242-21 are the following: 1) To determine the boundaries of selection criteria for the acoustic and electrical speech processing implant. 2) Refine and expand how electrophysiologic measures of auditory function can be used to understand how the auditory system responds to electrical stimulation. 3) Investigate factors that influence music perception and enjoyment of Cl recipients. 4) Describe and explain individual differences in perceptual, linguistic, and social outcomes, of individuals receiving cochlear implants in childhood. The purpose of this supplement is to complement the above goals of the currently funded P50 grant by studying ways to: improve and determine benefits of binaural cochlear implants using more diverse and realistic soundfield hearing tests. Specifically, our goals are to improve: (1) bilateral signal processing; (2) bilateral fitting; and (3) the evaluation of bilateral and unilateral devices. Several experiments are planned and will determine if: (1) moderately directional microphones are superior to highly directional microphones (the latter might exclude important binaural cues); (2) fixed directional microphones are superior to adaptive directional microphones; (3) linear amplitude coding is superior to amplitude compression; (4) synchronous amplitude compression across devices can preserve binaural cues; (5) the use of a """"""""conditioning"""""""" stimulus improves binaural hearing; (6) electrophysiological measures that match electrodes across ears result in improved bilateral performance; and (7) bilateral fittings are superior to unilateral fittings in patients who are experienced unilateral listeners. We use several new tests, including ones of distance perception, movement direction, speech recognition with localization cues, and speech recognition while performing a visual thinking task. We believe our proposal is innovative in the comprehensive set of new tests we have designed, in our exploration of new bilateral fitting and signal processing approaches, and our comprehensive evaluation of bilateral and experienced unilateral implant users. The impact of these experiments is very high, in that we hope to be able to improve hearing in challenging everyday conditions and will have direct relevance for the larger population of hearing-aid users. ? ? ?
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