Two patients. Same device. Same surgery. Vastly different outcomes. One understands speech effortlessly; the other struggles even in quiet rooms. We're working to understand why and how to close this gap.
Neural Health
Before sound reaches the brain, it must pass through the auditory nerve and in many CI users, these nerve fibers have degenerated. We're developing methods to reliably measure neural health at individual electrode sites and determine how this degeneration constrains what patients can perceive.
Personalized Stimulation
Current cochlear implants use essentially the same stimulation approach for everyone but every patient's auditory nerve is different. We're investigating how to personalize stimulation strategies based on individual patterns of neural health, potentially improving outcomes without changing the hardware.
Perceptual Boundaries
Music sounds flat. Voices blur together in noise. These struggles trace back to spectral resolution. We use rigorous psychophysical methods to map the precise boundaries of perception in CI users, identifying where the bottlenecks lie and what might be done about them.