Listening to Music Through a Cochlear Implant, Part 1
By Ross, Mark; Hearing Loss Magazine, Vol. 29, No. 3, pp. 21-23Publication Date: May/June 2008
Article discusses difficulties associated with listening to music for former hearing-aid users who have received a cochlear implant (CI). The acoustical differences between speech and music are identified as the underlying cause of these difficulties, as CIs were engineered to improve speech perception rather than music appreciation, for which other processing strategies may be necessary. The components of a musical signal, beat, rhythm, pitch, timbre, and melody, are discussed as well as musical signal research conducted to identify where listening deficiencies occur. While research shows that implant users can perceive the rhythmical patterns of music as well as normally hearing people, pitch and timbre are identified as the components most poorly perceived by CI users. One promising research result mentioned is the discovery that the best input dynamic range of 40 dB is the same for both music and speech perception. The author, himself a CI user, also discusses the implementation of a personal “musical auditory training program,” in which he listens to music for 40 minutes a day in order to retrain himself in listening to and appreciating music through his CI in the way perceiving music through his hearing aid became the norm. The results of this training program will be discussed in Part 2 of the article.
Published by: Hearing Loss Association of America (formerly Self Help for Hard of Hearing People) (Website:http://www.hearingloss.org)
This publication is included in the library of the National Rehabilitation Information Center (NARIC), accession number J55168
