title: Channel interaction limits melodic pitch perception in simulated cochlear implants.
abstract: In cochlear implants (CIs), melodic pitch perception is limited by the spectral resolution, which in turn is limited by the number of spectral channels as well as interactions between adjacent channels. This study investigated the effect of channel interaction on melodic contour identification (MCI) in normal-hearing subjects listening to novel 16-channel sinewave vocoders that simulated channel interaction in CI signal processing. MCI performance worsened as the degree of channel interaction increased. Although greater numbers of spectral channels may be beneficial to melodic pitch perception, the present data suggest that it is also important to improve independence among spectral channels.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA. jcrew@hei.org
authors.forename: Joseph D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Crew
authors.forename: John J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Galvin
authors.forename: Qian-Jie
authors.initials: QJ
authors.lastname: Fu
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001301:Audiometry, Pure-Tone; D001309:Auditory Threshold; D003054:Cochlear Implants; D003198:Computer Simulation; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D009146:Music; D010898:Pitch Perception; D011474:Prosthesis Design; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D013018:Sound Spectrography; D055815:Young Adult