ARTICLES
World-first Study into Cochlear Implants and Impact on Speech (continued)
“The OSNR appears to have the capability to predict what will
happen as a result of changing the parameters available to
clinicians when tailoring the implant performance to the specific
needs of a patient,” said Professor Gregg Suaning, a global
leader in implantable bionics from the School of Aero-space,
Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering, and co-author of
the study. “The result might be that changes that were never
considered as possible improvements may now be used to
achieve a better outcome for recipients of cochlear implants.”
yourself. Instead, we rely on dedicated volunteers with cochlear
implants who spend hours in sound-proof rooms listening to
sentences in noise and telling us what they hear. It is vital work,
but mentally draining. OSNR has the potential to drastically
reduce the amount of time that we need from our volunteers,” he
said.
The next steps in this work include working with cochlear implant
recipients to make changes in their implant based on the new
model’s predictions, and demonstrating that the outcome is
indeed an improvement in speech recognition in noise.
Brett Swanson, Principal Research Engineer at Cochlear Limited,
highlighted another important aspect of the study. “A cochlear
implant stimulates the auditory nerve directly; hence, if you are
a researcher with normal hearing, you can’t actually listen to it
Inquiries: Helen Loughlin 02 9351 2971
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SCIENCE EDUCATIONAL NEWS VOL 67 NO 4