Research Article Modeling of Auditory Neuron Response Thresholds with Cochlear Implants

Copyright © 2015 Frederic Venail et al.This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The quality of the prosthetic-neural interface is a critical point for cochlear implant efficiency. It depends not only on technical and anatomical factors such as electrode position into the cochlea (depth and scalar placement), electrode impedance, and distance between the electrode and the stimulated auditory neurons, but also on the number of functional auditory neurons. The efficiency of electrical stimulation can be assessed by the measurement of e-CAP in cochlear implant users. In the present study, we modeled the activation of auditory neurons in cochlear implant recipients (nucleus device). The electrical response, measured using auto-NRT (neural responses telemetry) algorithm, has been analyzed using multivariate regression with cubic splines in order to take into account the variations of insertion depth of electrodes amongst subjects as well as the other technical and anatomical factors listed above. NRT thresholds depend on the electrode squared impedance