Adapting to the Sound of Music — Development of Music Discrimination Skills in Recently Implanted CI Users

Cochlear implants (CIs) are optimized for speech perception but poor in conveying musical sound features such as pitch, melody, and timbre. The present study investigated the early development of discrimination of musical sound features after cochlear implantation. The study found significant improvement in CIre's neural discrimination of pitch and timbre as marked by increased MMN amplitudes. The results indicate that the development of musical discrimination can be detected neurophysiologically early after the switch-on. However, a prolonged adaptation period may be required to take advantage of the sparse information from the implant fully. Behavioral discrimination accuracy was notably high shortly after implant switch-on, although well below that of NH listeners. This study provides new insight into the early development of music-discrimination abilities in CI users and may have clinical and therapeutic relevance.