Simulating the effect of spread of excitation in cochlear implants

A model was developed to simulate acoustically the effects of excitation spread in cochlear implants (CI). Based on neurophysiologic data, the proposed model simulates the electrical-current decay rate associated with broad and narrow types of excitation, such as those produced by monopolar and bipolar electrode configurations. The effect of excitation spread on speech intelligibility was simulated in normal-hearing subjects by varying the slopes of the synthesis bands in the noise vocoder. Sentences and monosyllabic words processed via 4–16 channels of stimulation with varying degrees of excitation spread were presented to normal-hearing listeners for identification. Results showed significant interaction between spectral resolution (number of channels) and spread of excitation. The effect of narrowing the excitation spread was minimal when the spectral resolution was sufficiently good (>8 channels) but it was significant when the spectral resolution was poor (4 channels). A significant decrement in performance was observed for extremely narrow excitation spread. This outcome is partly consistent with behavioral data obtained with cochlear implant studies in that CI users tend to do as well or better with monopolar stimulation than with bipolar stimulation.