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Improving Interaural Time Difference Sensitivity Using Short Inter-pulse Intervals with Amplitude-Modulated Pulse Trains in Bilateral Cochlear Implants

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Abstract

Interaural time differences (ITDs) at low frequencies are important for sound localization and spatial speech unmasking. These ITD cues are not encoded in commonly used envelope-based stimulation strategies for cochlear implants (CIs) using high pulse rates. However, ITD sensitivity can be improved by adding extra pulses with short inter-pulse intervals (SIPIs) in unmodulated high-rate trains. Here, we investigated whether this improvement also applies to amplitude-modulated (AM) high-rate pulse trains. To this end, we systematically varied the temporal position of SIPI pulses within the envelope cycle (SIPI phase), the fundamental frequency (F0) of AM (125 Hz and 250 Hz), and AM depth (from 0.1 to 0.9). Stimuli were presented at an interaurally place-matched electrode pair at a reference pulse rate of 1000 pulses/s. Participants performed an ITD-based left/right discrimination task. SIPI insertion resulted in improved ITD sensitivity throughout the range of modulation depths and for both male and female F0s. The improvements were largest for insertion at and around the envelope peak. These results are promising for conveying salient ITD cues at high pulse rates commonly used to encode speech information.

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Acknowledgments

We thank all our listeners for their participation in our study. We thank Michael Mihocic for assistance with data collection and the experimental hardware and software setup. We thank the Institute of Ion Physics and Applied Physics, Leopold-Franzens-University of Innsbruck, Austria, for providing the equipment for direct electric stimulation. We thank the associate editor and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier version of this article.

Funding

This study was funded by the National Institutes of Health grant R01 DC 005775 via a subcontract. Additional funding was provided by the European Commission (Project ALT, Grant 691229) and the Danube Partnership project (MULT-DR 11/2017).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Acoustics Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Wohllebengasse 12-14, A-1040, Vienna, Austria

    Sridhar Srinivasan, Bernhard Laback & Piotr Majdak

  2. HNO Department, Medical University of Vienna, Spitalgasse 23, A-1090, Vienna, Austria

    Bernhard Laback & Christoph Arnoldner

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  1. Sridhar Srinivasan
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  2. Bernhard Laback
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  3. Piotr Majdak
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  4. Christoph Arnoldner
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Correspondence to Bernhard Laback.

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All procedures presented here were approved by the ethics committee of the Medical University of Vienna (vote no. 2155/2013).

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Srinivasan, S., Laback, B., Majdak, P. et al. Improving Interaural Time Difference Sensitivity Using Short Inter-pulse Intervals with Amplitude-Modulated Pulse Trains in Bilateral Cochlear Implants. JARO 21, 105–120 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10162-020-00743-6

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