Integration of acoustic and electrical hearing.

For some individuals with severe high-frequency hearing loss, hearing aids cannot provide a satisfactory improvement in speech recognition. However, these same patients often have too much residual hearing to qualify as candidates for a cochlear implant. Here we describe results with the Iowa/Nucleus Hybrid cochlear implant, which is designed to preserve the patient's residual low-frequency hearing while at the same time supplementing their high-frequency hearing through electrical stimulation. The advantages of this approach are presented, including improved speech recognition in competing backgrounds as compared with traditional cochlear implants. The results with the Iowa/Nucleus Hybrid device demonstrate the ability of the auditory system to integrate acoustic and electrical stimulation, even under conditions of severe distortions to the normal cochlear place-frequency mapping.

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