title: Auditory training in patients with unilateral cochlear implant and contralateral acoustic stimulation.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  It was hypothesized that auditory training would allow bimodal patients to combine in a better manner the low-frequency acoustic information provided by a hearing aid with the electric information provided by a cochlear implant, thus maximizing the benefit of combining acoustic (A) and electric (E) stimulation (EAS).
  
  
  METHODS
  Performance in quiet or in the presence of a multitalker babble at +5 dB signal to noise ratio was evaluated in seven bimodal patients before and after auditory training. The performance measures comprised identification of vowels and consonants, consonant-nucleus-consonant words, sentences, voice gender, and emotion. Baseline performance was evaluated in the A-alone, E-alone, and combined EAS conditions once per week for 3 weeks. A phonetic-contrast training protocol was used to facilitate speech perceptual learning. Patients trained at home 1 hour a day, 5 days a week, for 4 weeks with both their cochlear implant and hearing aid devices on. Performance was remeasured after the 4 weeks of training and 1 month after training stopped.
  
  
  RESULTS
  After training, there was significant improvement in vowel, consonant, and consonant-nucleus-consonant word identification in the E and EAS conditions. The magnitude of improvement in the E condition was equivalent to that in the EAS condition. The improved performance was largely retained 1 month after training stopped.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Auditory training, in the form administered in this study, can improve bimodal patients' overall speech understanding by improving E-alone performance.
authors.affiliation: Department of Speech and Hearing Science, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA. ting.zhang@asu.edu
authors.forename: Ting
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Michael F
authors.initials: MF
authors.lastname: Dorman
authors.forename: Qian-Jie
authors.initials: QJ
authors.lastname: Fu
authors.forename: Anthony J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Spahr
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D000368:Aged; D019929:Cochlear Implantation / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D003054:Cochlear Implants; D003131:Combined Modality Therapy; D003638:Deafness / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D005260:Female; D006310:Hearing Aids; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D010897:Pitch Discrimination; D013018:Sound Spectrography; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013063:Speech Discrimination Tests; D013069:Speech Reception Threshold Test