Àbstract:

Cochlear Implants are implantable medical devices that can restore hearing to people with profound hearing losss. Speech recognition in noise and music perception with these devices are still severely limited. A factor that determines hearing performance with these devices is the signal processing method or strategy implemented in the cochlear implant sound processor. This seminar will present the cochlear implant system and it will review how hearing is perceived with these devices. The most common signal processing methods as well as new techniques to improve pitch perception, music perception and speech intelligibility will presented. The evaluation methods to assess performance with these devices will be also discussed.

Bio:

Waldo Nogueira received his Ing. degree (M. Sc.) in Telecommunication Engineering from the Technical University of Catalonia in 2003. After completing his Master's Thesis, he worked toward his PhD degree at the Laboratory of Information Technology of the University of Hanover. During his PhD he developed several strategies for cochlear implants, some of which have been commercialized, like the MP3000 by Cochlear Corporation. Furthermore, he did extensive work on designing evaluation methods to assess sound performance using cochlear implants based on auditory nerve models and automatic speech recognizers. This work finished with the publication of his Dissertation: "Design and Evaluation of Signal Processing Strategies for Cochlear Implants based on Psychoacoustic Masking and Current Steering". In 2008 he joined the European R&D centre of Advanced Bionics in Belgium as a Research Engineer. His main tasks consisted of developing new algorithms for stimulation of cochlear implants and research on electrophysiology of the auditory nerve. In 2009 he became Principal Research Engineer with emphasis in signal processing at the European Centre of the same company in Hanover (Germany). His main tasks consisted of research and development of new audio signal processing algorithms for cochlear implants, electrophysiology and management of research projects with external R&D centres. Since Semptember he is working at the Music Technology Group of the Pompeu Fabra starting a research line on music signal processing and cochlear implants.