The MuSIC perception test: A novel battery for testing music perception of cochlear implant users

Abstract

This study was undertaken to evaluate the musical sounds in cochlear implants (MuSIC) perception test, created to assess the music-listening abilities of cochlear implant (CI) users. Thirty-one unilateral MED-EL COMBI 40+/PULSARCI¹⁰⁰ users and a control group of 67 adults with normal hearing (NH) participated. The MuSIC test comprises six objective and two subjective modules employing approximately 2800 musical files recorded from non-synthesized instruments. A subset was used for comparing CI and NH participants’ results. CI and NH participants performed significantly differently on: pitch discrimination, melody discrimination, chord discrimination, instrument detection, and instrument identification. No significant difference in performance was seen on the subtests of rhythm discrimination or dissonance rating and emotion rating. The MuSIC test was found to be a valuable tool for assessing music perception in CI users and NH participants, whether investigating one aspect of music perception in depth or conducting a broad survey of music perception.

Keywords:

• Cochlear implant
• COMBI 40+
• Dissonance
• Emotion
• Music perception
• Normal hearing participants
• Pitch perception
• PULSARCI¹⁰⁰ implants
• Rhythm
• Timbre perception

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Ms Robin Cooley and Ms Simone Telser of MED-EL GmbH (Austria) for their assistance in preparing this manuscript.