New measurement method to help hearing impaireds music listening

Bjørn Petersen, associate professor of research and development activities at RAMA, has, together with colleagues at the Center for Music in the Brain, published an article in a special edition of the scientific journal Frontiers in Neuroscience.

The article describes the results of an experiment with users of cochlear implant (CI), an advanced hearing aid that stimulates surviving nerve cells in the inner ear with electrical impulses. CI typically provides good speech reproduction, but unsatisfactory music experience.

The experiment uses a new measurement method, based on EEG (electroencephalography – a technique for detecting parts of the brain’s electrical activity using electrodes on the surface of the head), which should provide objective indications of music perception by CI users. To date, researchers had to use more subjective measurement methods in trying to uncover the perception of music by CI users.

These patients often have a strong desire to regain their musical enjoyment, and the new measurement method can assist audiologists and CI technicians in their mapping of patients’ benefit from the implant and ongoing programming.

In addition, the new measurement method can serve as a significant complement to existing measurement methods.

The project is in continuation of Bjørn Petersen’s many years of research in the field of Music and Cochlear Implants, which was also the focal point of his PhD project, which he has described in several articles and disseminated at conferences in Denmark and internationally.

The article is open-access and can be read freely via this link.