Interaural mismatch causes poor spatial hearing and fusion across ears

What is it about?

Arrays of electrodes, placed inside the inner ear (a cochlear implant), may be at different depths. This can cause frequency mismatch across the ears. We simulated this situation with sounds and presented them to people with typical hearing. Then we measured the effect of frequency mismatch on multiple two-eared (or binaural) hearing tasks. We found that mismatch caused people to hear sounds at the wrong place, they were worse at telling two locations apart, and a single sound was more often perceived as split and diffuse instead of singular and punctuate.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

The auditory system is normally extremely sensitive to small differences in sounds between the ears. However, interaural mismatch reduces this exquisite sensitivity - thereby reducing people's abilities to hearing sounds at different locations in space and understand speech in background noise.

Perspectives