Preservation of auditory brainstem response thresholds after cochleostomy and titanium microactuator implantation in the lateral wall of cat scala tympani.

Hypothesis: The safety of implanting a titanium microactuator into the lateral wall of cat scala tympani was assessed by comparing preoperative and postoperative auditory brainstem response (ABR) thresholds for 1 to 3 months.

Background: The safety of directly stimulating cochlear perilymph with an implantable hearing system requires maintaining preoperative hearing levels. This cat study is an essential step in the development of the next generation of fully implantable hearing devices for humans.

Development of a test environment to evaluate performance of modern hearing aid features.

This article describes a new test environment and materials with the potential to measure performance differences among different hearing aid signal processing methods and features. Normative data suggest a linearly predictable increase in difficulty on a speech-in-noise task as the masker changes from random noise to multiple-talker speech, and the number of talkers increases. Data collected with normal listeners revealed no differences across four test sites for the single loudspeaker (Noise-Front) results and some differences across test sites for the multiple loudspeaker results.