Pitch-based electrode matching in cochlear implants is confounded by acclimatization and brain plasticity

Evidence

In summary, all three methods can obtain reasonable interaural electrode pairing results. There is substantial variability in all the measurements both within and between individual CI users. There are pros and cons for all the three methods and there is no gold standard to judge which one is better. The acclimatization to the frequency to place map of the patient’s CI seems unignorably in the pitch perception. Pitch matching data may be ‘misleadingly good’ because of acclimatization or brain plasticity which does not affect the IPTD and the BIC based matching. Knowledge about the location of the implant inside the cochlea maybe helpful in judging the pairing results. Longitudinal measurements are necessary in the future to investigate the plasticity of the binaural perception in the BiCI users. The BIC is a promising candidate for electrode pairing of BiCI subjects, especially for pediatric fitting. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 1475

Pitch matching data may be ‘misleadingly good’ because of acclimatization or brain plasticity which does not affect the IPTD and the BIC based matching. Knowledge about the location of the implant inside the cochlea maybe helpful in judging the pairing results. Longitudinal measurements are necessary in the future to investigate the plasticity of the binaural perception in the BiCI users. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 1451

Categorization

• QUESTION: How exactly does acclimatization skew pitch matching while leaving IPTD and BIC measures unaffected? Mechanisms unstated here.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 1475; Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 1451