Noise enhanced information transmission in a model of multichannel cochlear implantation

摘要

Cochlear implants are used to restore functional hearing to people with profound deafness. Success, as measured by speech intelligibility scores, varies greatly amongst patients; a few receive almost no benefit while some are able to use a telephone under favourable listening conditions. Using a novel nerve model and the principles of suprathreshold stochastic resonance, we demonstrate that the rate of information transfer through a cochlear implant system can be globally maximized by the addition of noise. If this additional information could be used by the brain then it would lead to greater speech intelligibility, which is important given that the intelligibility of all cochlear implant recipients is poorer than that of people with normal hearing, particularly in adverse listening conditions.