Clinically Paired Electrodes Are Often Not Perceived as Pitch Matched

Abstract

For bilateral cochlear implant (CI) patients, electrodes that receive the same frequency allocation often stimulate locations in the left and right ear that do not yield the same perceived pitch, resulting in a pitch mismatch. This pitch mismatch may be related to degraded binaural abilities. Pitch mismatches have been found for some bilateral CI users and the goal of this study was to determine whether pitch mismatches are prevalent in bilateral CI patients, including those with extensive experience with bilateral CIs. To investigate this possibility, pitch matching was conducted with 16 bilateral CI patients. For 14 of the 16 participants, there was a significant difference between those electrodes in the left and right ear that yielded the same pitch and those that received the same frequency allocation in the participant’s clinical map. The results suggest that pitch mismatches are prevalent with bilateral CI users. The results also indicated that pitch mismatches persist even with extended bilateral CI experience. Such mismatches may reduce the benefits patients receive from bilateral CIs.