Choosing an implant

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set2

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I will be deciding on what implant I am going to get soon. I am curious to know what system some of you chose and what was the main reason. I also have some other questions:

Do any of you have the Freedom mini BTE? What kind of battery life are you getting with it?

If you are using the freedom with the rechargeable batteries what kind of useage are you getting from them?

What kind of useage are you getting from the power cells for the Auria or Harmony?

The Harmony has a t-mic which is supposed to help in noise. If anyone has used the T-mic has this been the case?

Has anyone tried the Harmony with the HiRES 120 feature? How has that worked out?

These are for the techies in the group:

Is it better to have more channels?

Is a faster temporal rate better?

Thanks for your input!
 
I have Bionic Auria HiRes because I like the color of it which make me feel comfortable with the CI on my head.

Sorry I can't answer to your questions because I don't have the Freedom.
 
set2 said:
...
These are for the techies in the group:

Is it better to have more channels?

Is a faster temporal rate better?

Thanks for your input!
Click to expand...

There is some debate on this. The first simply implies that more points of stimulus are more appropriate. The later implies that a faster input stream of data is more appropriate. It is probably between these two approaches that provide the best results. The problem is that there aren't many people who are bilateral and have Cochlear and a AB in tandem. They would be the best to judge that idea. Simply put, the jury is still out on that one. I will say that the brain is a fantastic fourier analysis machine (bar none) and does very well with what it gets.

When there are ~ 30,000 plus discrete points of stimulus with cochlear hairs and the complexity of the cochlear interpretation of the such stimulus, it becomes sort of irrelevant which way to go if both work pretty much equally well. Neither of them come even close to stimulating 30,000 points of stimulus. It all comes down to what is important to an individual and just go whichever one is inclined to go.
 
AB device

In theory, I think the AB device has both a faster data stream and more points of stimulus. The potential for a greater number of "channels" was a big factor in my decision, and the fact that the implant has the ability to go multipolar (read even more than 120 channels) means ultimately even more points of stimulus.

Both my audiologist and doctor were reluctant to say that would make a difference, however. In theory it does. In practice, they don't know. How many discrete stimulus points can a damaged cochlea handle? What about spectral or current smearing?

I do think the AB has more of an advantage right now just because the implant part of the device uses more recent technology. The Cochlear device has been using the same implant for 20 years. On one hand that's admirable, since everyone who has ever gotten the Cochlear device can get upgrades. But on the other hand, the AB device has technology available to it that wasn't around 20 years ago.

One of the big things is the opportunity for current steering and independent power sources. When I did my research on both devices I wanted to cut past the propaganda of the companies and see what the technical specs were. Of course most people are happy with their implants. Both devices perform miracles.

From an engineering perspective, the choice was obvious for me. I felt I had a better chance with music and many other things with the AB device. My docs and audis make a point of not showing preference for one device or another but their candid opinion was that AB was doing more to make music sound right. The other thing that I've heard a few times is that people with the AB device tend to get "back on their feet" more quickly-- I'm not sure what exactly that means.

But then again, they're doing so much on the engineering side of things but little is known about the biological side. That's why 120 or more channels ultimately might not even matter. Is it really possible to fine-tune a current to the specificity of a normally functioning human ear? I don't know. I'm not a physicist.

All of this stuff I'm spewing is based on my research. I haven't even gotten turned on yet. That'll happen next week, and I fully expect a long road-- because of the biological side of things-- and even then, whether I do great or piss poor, I wouldn't be able to tell you if it did a better job than the other one.
 
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