Improving melody recognition in cochlear implant recipients through individualized frequency map fitting

Recent research has shown that music perception remains very difficult for most cochlear implant (CI) users, who generally report being unsatisfied with the quality of music listening through the CI. In particular, the appreciation of the spectral features of music, which include pitch, melody and timbre, is widely known to be poorer than its rhythmic patterns. One of the possible causes for this may be the misalignment between the conventional frequency band allocation to the electrodes of the array (frequency-place function) and the distribution of pitch percepts generated by electrode stimulation along the array (electrode-pitch function). In this paper the authors investigate whether mismatch correction through individualized fitting of the processor's frequency maps can improve music understanding in ten Nucleus™ cochlear implant users, by comparing scores obtained with experimental and old map; both maps were tested before, immediately after and 1 month after the fitting through a music test battery designed for the purpose of the study.