title: Sensitivity to interaural time differences with combined cochlear implant and acoustic stimulation.
abstract: The interaural time difference (ITD) is an important cue to localize sound sources. Sensitivity to ITD was measured in eight users of a cochlear implant (CI) in the one ear and a hearing aid (HA) in the other severely impaired ear. The stimulus consisted of an electric pulse train of 100 pps and an acoustic filtered click train. Just-noticeable differences (JNDs) in ITD were measured using a lateralization paradigm. Four subjects exhibited median JNDs in ITD of 156, 341, 254, and 91 mus; the other subjects could not lateralize the stimuli consistently. Only the subjects who could lateralize had average acoustic hearing thresholds at 1,000 and 2,000 Hz better than 100-dB SPL. The electric signal had to be delayed by 1.5 ms to achieve synchronous stimulation at the auditory nerves.
authors.affiliation: ExpORL, Department Neurosciences, K.U.Leuven, O & N 2, Herestraat 49 bus 721, B-3000, Leuven, Belgium. tom.francart@med.kuleuven.be
authors.forename: Tom
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Francart
authors.forename: Jan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Brokx
authors.forename: Jan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wouters
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001309:Auditory Threshold / Q000502:physiology; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003054:Cochlear Implants; D003056:Cochlear Nerve; D003463:Cues; D004056:Differential Threshold / Q000502:physiology; D006309:Hearing / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008144:Loudness Perception / Q000502:physiology; D008875:Middle Aged; D013017:Sound Localization / Q000502:physiology*; D013997:Time Factors