Pitch ranking with nonsimultaneous dual-electrode electrical stimulation of the cochlea.

Abstract

It has already been established that simultaneous activation of two intracochlear electrodes can evoke a pitch percept which is intermediate to that of either electrode when activated by itself. In the present study, this result has been extended to nonsimultaneous activation of nearby electrodes. Pitch perception was investigated for electric stimuli presented on one or two intracochlear electrode pairs. All stimuli were pulse trains of period 4 ms. In the dual-electrode stimuli, each period contained two biphasic pulses, separated by 0.4 ms, with one pulse for each electrode pair. These stimuli were compared with loudness-balanced single-electrode stimuli, having one pulse per period, gene..