An Animal Model for Cochlear Implants

Objective: To test the feasibility of using the deaf white cat model of early-onset deafness. We studied the neu-ronal effects of prosthetic intervention with a clinical, “off-the-shelf ” multichannel cochlear implant. Methods:We placed cochlear implants in 5 deaf white kittens at age 12 and 24 weeks. The devices were acti-vated and stimulated in the laboratory using a clinical speech processor programmed with a high-resolution con-tinuous interleaved sampling (CIS) strategy for 8 to 24 weeks. Stimulus parameters were guided by electrically evoked brainstem responses and intracochlear-evoked po-tentials. Kittens were assessed with respect to their tol-erance and general behavior in response to speech, mu-sic, and environmental sounds. Results: Surgical complications were minimal, and kit