Cochlear Implant Speech in Noise Processing

Despite the success of a cochlear implant (CI) for providing or improving hearing ability for people with severe hearing loss, everyday conversations in background noise are still the main clinical complaint. The goal of this study is to understand the neural mechanisms by which listeners with a CI detect speech in noisy environments, and to understand how these mechanisms differ across a variety of CI listeners, in order to determine what variables are most relevant for predicting successful outcome. Therefore the purpose of PET neuroimaging in this study is to find the brain regions that relate to speech in noise effort using PET during auditory stimulation on a single session across a variety of CI users with different device configurations. An age-matched typical hearing control group provides a baseline for comparison. PET neuroimaging will be performed using a radioactive form of water, O-15 (an investigational agent), that will be injected into the body to examine brain blood flow using a PET/CT scanner.