R Y Litovsky

..These tests have potentially useful applications in clinical settings, where bilateral fittings of amplification devices are evaluated...

..A novel reaching for sound (RFS) methodology can yield a high level of spatial hearing ability in 2- to 3-year-old children with normal hearing and with bilateral cochlear implants (BiCIs)...

..By using CI simulations (with vocoders) and studying NH listeners under degraded listening conditions, we are able to tease apart limitations due to the hardware/software of the CI systems from limitations due to neural pathology...

..Work supported by NIH-NIDCD (grants 5R01DC003083 and 5R01DC8365)...

..Future advances in binaural fitting strategies and improved speech processing schemes that maximize binaural sensitivity will no doubt contribute to increasing the binaurally-driven advantages in persons with bilateral CIs...

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..These data suggest that the precedence effect is less effective at facilitating sound localization in young children than in adults. [Work supported by NIDCD Grant R01DC008957.]...

..The third aim was to examine whether sound lateralization (right versus left) emerges before sound localization within a hemifield...

..There were no effects of place of stimulation on binaural sensitivity, suggesting that there is no indication of a dependence of ITD sensitivity on apical vs basal electrode location...

..The errors are greater for children than adults. Results are discussed in the context of maturation of auditory and non-auditory factors...

..Review of recent studies on spatial-hearing abilities in children who use bilateral cochlear implants (BiCIs); compare performance of children who use BiCIs with children who have normal hearing...

..The potential utility of the measures used here for studying hearing-impaired children is also discussed...

..Neurons showing such dissociations may play an important role in the PE when the lead and the lag originate from very different directions...

..To measure the benefit (ie, sound localization and speech intelligibility in noise) of bilateral cochlear implants (CIs) in adults and in children...

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..The nearly normal binaural benefits under present simulation conditions and the lack of order of processing effect further suggest that preservation of binaural cues is likely to improve performance in bilaterally implanted recipients...

..It is possible that customized programming for bilateral CI processors based on knowledge about dead regions can enhance performance in adverse listening situations...

..Thus, the neural mechanisms that might be involved in the first stages of processing PE stimuli may be in place well before the behavioral correlate develops...

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..These results suggest that knowing the number and location(s) of maskers may not necessarily contribute significantly to solving the cocktail party problem, at least not when the location of the target is known...

..For these experiments, the performance in the speech intelligibility experiment was not limited by localization ability...

..Results were used to evaluate two predictive heuristics adapted from perceptual center (p-center) models...

..Localization acuity will emerge in deaf children who receive bilateral cochlear implants (BI-CIs) before the age of 3 years but not in age-matched children who use a single device...

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..In addition, to investigate the extent to which a hearing aid in the nonimplanted ear can also provide benefits on this task...

..Several possible explanations for the discrepancies between the present study and Saberi and Perrott's finding are discussed...

..It is probably only through the combined efforts of these fields that a full theory of precedence will evolve and useful models will be developed...

..The purpose of this study was to assess the time course of spoken word recognition in 2-year-old children who use cochlear implants (CIs) in quiet and in the presence of speech competitors...

..These results suggest that accurate localization of a co-located lead-lag pair is necessary for localization dominance to occur when the lag is spatially separated from the lead...

..Furthermore, because the tested patients had been deprived of binaural hearing for eight or more years, our results show that some sensitivity to time-varying interaural cues can persist over extended periods of binaural deprivation...

..Thus, an explanation of speech understanding in complex listening environments based on the combination of best-ear listening and binaural unmasking (without involving sound-localization) cannot be excluded...

..The long-term goal of this work is to extend our measures of auditory abilities to populations of children with sensori-neural hearing loss and with cognitive disabilities, including attention deficit disorders and autism. ..

..Findings from the BI-CI studies will provide quantitative measures of bilateral benefit in children and will be enlightening about the role of auditory plasticity and experience in a young human population. ..

..Findings from the BI-CI studies will provide quantitative measures of bilateral benefit in children and will be enlightening about the role of auditory plasticity and experience in a young human population. ..

..Findings from the BI-CI studies will provide quantitative measures of bilateral benefit in children and will be enlightening about the role of auditory plasticity and experience in a young human population. ..

..Studies in Aim 3 might contribute to the future design of hearing aids and cochlear implants that take advantage of binaural cues and compensate for the degradation of functioning in noisy and reverberant environments. ..

..In addition, the research might provide some insight into situations in which bilateral hearing, with dual CIs, or with a CI/HA combination, should or should not be pursued. ..

..saving an ear" for future technology. If bilateral CIs cannot ultimately provide excellent binaural hearing, and if alternative treatments for deafness become feasible, our work will be of importance to pediatric decision making. ..