Cochlea America coming out with a new Processor?

ref74 said:
NRT should correctly stand for Neural Response Telemetry. Basically it uses the possibility to use the electrodes to stimulate electrically the nerve and to measure at the same time its response to the stimulus.
As far as I know it is exactly the test they usually do after implantation (when still in the surgery room also).
There is a kind of correlation between the profile got from NRT and the T and C levels of the map. It is especially useful for small kids, whose active collaboration is usually not so much expected and not so reliable.
Anyway it remains an objective measure, avoinding any bias due to personal reactions to the stimulus. The difficult part of using NRT for mapping seems to be the function that correlate the profile you can get from it and the actual T and C levels. There is a personal variability thatmakes things difficult.
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He is correct, this is Neural Response Telemetry that was used on me. That's what my sub audiologist told me. I go back again to try to get better maps on September 24th. I can't wait. I hope I get better maps, especially for music! I like for my T and C levels to be set manually, you know where the lowest beep you can hear you raise your hand and the loudest beep you can tolerate you can raise your hands, and they set the T and C according to your hand responses. NRT just does it all automatically and it goes beyond my tolerance and goes beyond my threshold level, which is why I am not hearing well because after that she also went and screwed around with the map to try to fix the way voices and cars sound and music and stuff, and then she gave up so quickly. She didn't try hard enough like my regular audiologist does. NRT is normally used for children at my CI clinic.

DeafLissa, how well do you usually hear things after each mapping with the NRT being used? Even though you get dizzy? I'm curious.
 
I wonder if the Nucleus 5 will come out in other colors than just white and black? I hope they come out with hot pink or some other really cool colors. I like my Nucleus Freedom but am pretty bored with the black. At least it goes with everything I wear and I'm able to put cute little stickers that I buy at Hot Topic on my coils. One coil has a teal star sticker and the other coil has a silver glittery skull sticker on it. (I got 2 processors for my left ear). I wonder how many colors the Nucleus 5 will come out in this time?
 
LuciaDisturbed said:
I wonder if the Nucleus 5 will come out in other colors than just white and black? I hope they come out with hot pink or some other really cool colors. I like my Nucleus Freedom but am pretty bored with the black. At least it goes with everything I wear and I'm able to put cute little stickers that I buy at Hot Topic on my coils. One coil has a teal star sticker and the other coil has a silver glittery skull sticker on it. (I got 2 processors for my left ear). I wonder how many colors the Nucleus 5 will come out in this time?
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Did you not get my link via PM.

White, brown, black, gray, beige and different colour Full processor covers including pink (not so hot pink definely not baby pink but PINK)
 
they have a variety of colored/designed covers that you can put onto the Nucleus 5 processor, and there is a pink cover similar to the Freedom pink BTE! (color-wise that is). So basically you have your standard colored BTE, and then all these covers you slide onto the BTE to jazz them up.
 
Phi4Sius said:
I'm curious...have they been able to remove the robotic sound altogether with the new generation technology so that everything sounds more natural right from the start?
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I think they do that because they have all the electrodes on. It helps them determine what works for you and what doesn't. The first day sound robotic to me, and after my second mapping (the 2nd or 3rd day) it sounded alot better.

But I had to get used to it until it started to sound natural for me.
 
Phi4Sius said:
I'm curious...have they been able to remove the robotic sound altogether with the new generation technology so that everything sounds more natural right from the start?
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That probably won't happen until they create an electrode with many more discrete points than currently available.

I have a theory why the "robotic" sounds everybody experience. Most people who have loss hearing have definitely lost some the higher frequency sounds. Getting a CI "restores" some of that back and thus a shift in sound frequencies across the board. The brain has to adjust to that "shift" and over time it becomes normal. Everybody is different in how fast that adjustment takes. I was hearing normally the next day.
 
It can not be as normal from the start since my high frequencies above 5k has not been simulated in a long time due to limitations on hearing aid technology not givinng giving much output not gain at those frequencies. It took some time for those nerves that have been arrophyied to come back online as to speak. Those high ptiches can be irritated to hear for a while in my case. It is all relative to what normal is since in my case I never had "normal" hearing. I struggle to understand British accents all my life and there were no close captions at the time I was growing up. My CI implant gave me more that the best hearing I ever had with hearing aids as a kid even.
 
john57 said:
It can not be as normal from the start since my high frequencies above 5k has not been simulated in a long time due to limitations on hearing aid technology not givinng giving much output not gain at those frequencies. It took some time for those nerves that have been arrophyied to come back online as to speak. Those high ptiches can be irritated to hear for a while in my case. It is all relative to what normal is since in my case I never had "normal" hearing. I struggle to understand British accents all my life and there were no close captions at the time I was growing up. My CI implant gave me more that the best hearing I ever had with hearing aids as a kid even.
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If you want to get technical...:P

Yeah, I remember reading about something like this way back. Very reasonable explanation. I'm sure I was adjusting to my CI over the first months but it felt fairly normally since day two for me. This was especially true of speech. I do recall that the higher pitched stuff took a while for me to get really comfortable with it.
 
sr171soars said:
That probably won't happen until they create an electrode with many more discrete points than currently available.

I have a theory why the "robotic" sounds everybody experience. Most people who have loss hearing have definitely lost some the higher frequency sounds. Getting a CI "restores" some of that back and thus a shift in sound frequencies across the board. The brain has to adjust to that "shift" and over time it becomes normal. Everybody is different in how fast that adjustment takes. I was hearing normally the next day.
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Creating an electrode array with more discrete electrodes does not make any sense at the moment, because of the current spreading effect that happens inside the cochlea. The cochlear fluid is conductive and its presence causesthe current to spread to the spiral ganglion in an area sorrounding the electrode, that is much bigger than desired. It's like trying to play a piano with fingers as large as three or four keys... :shock:
To solve this problem there are some ideas available:
- placing the electrode much closer to the neural ganglions either by different surgery technique and different electrode design
- stimulate the neural growth in the electrde zones, to make the electrode-ganglion contact closer. The idea is deliverying neural grow factors selectively. Of course a lot of experimentation is needed.
- creating a mmuch more complex array of electrodes, and using complex stimulation matrices to exploit current summation and reduce the spreading effect (phased array stimulation). The nanotechnology behind this kind of electrode desing is not readily available, or more probably is not cost accessible at the moment.


The robotic soud is caused primarily by the low number of discrete percievable pitches (the brain learn to compensate after a while), but also your hypothesis sounds sensible!
 
ref74 said:
Creating an electrode array with more discrete electrodes does not make any sense at the moment, because of the current spreading effect that happens inside the cochlea. The cochlear fluid is conductive and its presence causesthe current to spread to the spiral ganglion in an area sorrounding the electrode, that is much bigger than desired. It's like trying to play a piano with fingers as large as three or four keys... :shock:
To solve this problem there are some ideas available:
- placing the electrode much closer to the neural ganglions either by different surgery technique and different electrode design
- stimulate the neural growth in the electrde zones, to make the electrode-ganglion contact closer. The idea is deliverying neural grow factors selectively. Of course a lot of experimentation is needed.
- creating a mmuch more complex array of electrodes, and using complex stimulation matrices to exploit current summation and reduce the spreading effect (phased array stimulation). The nanotechnology behind this kind of electrode desing is not readily available, or more probably is not cost accessible at the moment.
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Good analogy about the piano keys. Given current technology, your explanation sounds reasonable. My idea of more discrete points was when we could stimulate more points without any crossover effects. When will that occur? Who knows? I think they will utimately figure that out.

ref74 said:
The robotic soud is caused primarily by the low number of discrete percievable pitches (the brain learn to compensate after a while), but also your hypothesis sounds sensible!
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It is probably more having less discrete points with the higher pitch shift thrown in for good measure. Sort of a "no wonder" folks have some trouble in the beginning.
 
The improvements on pitch discrimination will probably occur in a couple of implant generations. 3-6 years at least. They are working on that. It is possible to get some technical details in the choclear academy website. Pretty interesting.
The bad thing here is that it is all on the inner part and probably it won't be sufficient to upgrade the speech processor, as it happened for the biggest advances in the last years...
 
Even today there is improvement still being made with the new Cochlear Nucleus 5 implant over the Freedom implant. I already spoke with a few users that have switch to the Nucleus 5 from wearing the freedom and they are getting better results from the CNC words test and one I have known is getting 100% percent on the HINT test. The cochlear web page does have a graph that shows the different between the CNC words test after six months of using the freedom and with the Nucleus 5. Cochlear is claiming about up to 161 pitches can be detected from users using the Freedom processor. I believe that it takes time for the brain to adjust that some of the different pitches are coming from the same electrode and just getting the nerves ajusted to high frequency sounds. Just unscrewing a plastic jar of diary creamer was super loud for a time.
 
Sure, signal processing is also seeing improvements, but these are relatively small steps forward. For sure the technology has evolved readically in the last 10 years!
A change in the technology of the inner implant would allow an impressive change, order of magnitude!!! The perspective is going from 150 to 1500 pitches, that's what we can expect as the next big evolution.
 
john57 said:
Even today there is improvement still being made with the new Cochlear Nucleus 5 implant over the Freedom implant. I already spoke with a few users that have switch to the Nucleus 5 from wearing the freedom and they are getting better results from the CNC words test and one I have known is getting 100% percent on the HINT test. The cochlear web page does have a graph that shows the different between the CNC words test after six months of using the freedom and with the Nucleus 5. Cochlear is claiming about up to 161 pitches can be detected from users using the Freedom processor. I believe that it takes time for the brain to adjust that some of the different pitches are coming from the same electrode and just getting the nerves ajusted to high frequency sounds. Just unscrewing a plastic jar of diary creamer was super loud for a time.
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Would you mind sharing that information with me? I can't access the graphical information due to my screen reader and I'm interested in finding out more. Thanks! :)
 
There is a graph on the web site on hearing performance that is showing that at the initial user fit with the Nucleus 5 the CNC words test at 60dbA will get about 78% words correct. The freedom after 6 months of use the average user on the CNC words test at 70dbA 10dbA higher will get about 59%.
While I read everthing with a gain of salt this tell me that I except some inprovement with the Nucleus 5 especially in noise. The internal implant is the thickness of two dimes and has 2 ½ times the impact strength of the pervious implant. The external processor by the way has four processors in it and it is built on a titanium frame with titanium bayonet connectors that are Teflon-coated. It uses two disposable batteries with about the same life with the three batteries on the Freedom.



Hear Again said:
Would you mind sharing that information with me? I can't access the graphical information due to my screen reader and I'm interested in finding out more. Thanks! :)
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