Perception of music improved for users of cochlear implants

The technique lets users perceive differences between musical instruments, a significant improvement from what standard cochlear implants can offer, said lead researcher Les Atlas, a University of Washington professor of electrical engineering.

‘Right now, cochlear-implant subjects do well when it’s quiet and there is a single person talking, but with music, noisy rooms or multiple people talking, it’s difficult to hear,’ Atlas said in a statement. ‘We are on the way to solving the issue with music.’

Atlas and other researchers believe that hearing music has possible links to hearing speech better in noisy settings, another goal of this research.

Atlas and collaborator Jay Rubinstein, a UW professor of otolaryngology and of bioengineering, and members of their labs recently published their initial findings in the IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering. A study on eight cochlear-implant users showed that using this new coding strategy let them distinguish between musical instruments much more accurately than with the standard devices.