Bilateral cochlear implant users can at least qualitatively benefit from the effects that are known from normal-hearing subjects, that is, head shadow, summation, and squelch effect. Bilateral cochlear implantation also reduces the performance gap between cochlear implant users and normal-hearing subjects.
Bilateral cochlear implants offer a substantial benefit in sound localization to late-deafened, late-implanted subjects. The very limited data from early-deafened subjects implanted at a later age could suggest that these subjects may not benefit in sound localization from bilateral cochlear implants. It is possible that early implantation for early deafened subjects might allow better acquisition of spatial hearing, thus leading to improved localization performance.
Results show an average frequency discrimination of 8.8% for sequential stimulation and 11.2% for simultaneous stimulation, of the nominal test frequency. Frequency discrimination ability varied across subjects and test electrode pairs. The difference in performance between sequential and simultaneous stimulation was not statistically significant.
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