Deactivating an electrode shifts frequency-to-electrode allocation and can negate expected benefits.

Evidence

Some researchers have not observed benefit from electrode deactivation and have even demonstrated potentially deleterious effects for Cochlear device users. Henshall and McKay ( 2001 ) used a multidimensional scaling technique to identify and deactivate electrodes having non-tonotopic percepts. They did not find an improvement in speech perception when channels were switched off and hypothesized that this could be due to the shift in frequency-to-electrode allocation produced by clinical software when electrodes are deactivated; particularly in the apical region. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 2059

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the question of why channel-deactivation benefit varies across devices and studies; echoes the 2057 finding that Cochlear users benefited least.