OBJECTIVE Binaural beamformers are super-directional hearing aids created by combining microphone outputs from each side of the head. While they offer substantial improvements in SNR over conventional directional hearing aids, the benefits (and possible limitations) of these devices in realistic, complex listening situations have not yet been fully explored. In this study we evaluated the perfo...

Children who are deaf and receive bilateral cochlear implants (BiCIs) perform better on spatial hearing tasks using bilateral rather than unilateral inputs; however, they underperform relative to normal-hearing (NH) peers. This gap in performance is multi-factorial, including the inability of speech processors to reliably deliver binaural cues. Although much is known regarding binaural sensitiv...

A case report of a young, adult male with multiple sclerosis who demonstrates binaural interference is presented. Binaural interference was demonstrated on behavioral and physiologic measures during the active stage. Binaural interference was present, although reduced, during the stage of remission. During remission, binaural interference occurred despite the absence of interaural asymmetry in ...

To scrutinize the binaural contribution to speech-in-noise reception, four groups of elderly participants with or without audiometric asymmetry <2 kHz and with or without near-normal binaural intelligibility level difference (BILD) completed tests of monaural and binaural phase sensitivity as well as cognitive function. Groups did not differ in age, overall degree of hearing loss, or cognitive ...

For many years (e.g., Cherry, 1953), hearing care professionals have understood the advantage of listening with two ears compared with one. In addition to improved intelligibility of speech in quiet, noisy, and reverberant environments, binaural versus monaural listening improves perceived sound quality and decreases the effort listeners must expend in order to understand a target voice of inte...

For many years (e.g., Cherry, 1953), hearing care professionals have understood the advantage of listening with two ears compared with one. In addition to improved intelligibility of speech in quiet, noisy, and reverberant environments, binaural versus monaural listening improves perceived sound quality and decreases the effort listeners must expend in order to understand a target voice of inte...

Binaural hearing in cochlear implant (CI) users can be achieved either by bilateral implantation or bimodally with a contralateral hearing aid (HA). Binaural-bimodal hearing has the advantage of complementing the high-frequency electric information from the CI by low-frequency acoustic information from the HA. We examined the contribution of a contralateral HA in 25 adult implantees to their pe...

Recently, hearing aid systems where the left and right ear devices collaborate with one another have received much attention. Apart from supporting natural binaural hearing, such systems hold great potential for improving the intelligibility of speech in the presence of noise through beamforming algorithms. Binaural beamforming for hearing aids requires an exchange of microphone signals between...

The present study used an independent-group design to compare the benefits provided by binaural, single-channel, linear, full-shell in-the-ear hearing aids and binaural, 2-channel, wide-dynamic-range-compression in-the-canal hearing aids in groups of older hearing aid wearers. Hearing aid outcome measures were obtained at both 1-month (n = 53) and 6-month (n = 34) postfit intervals with each de...

An essential task for the central auditory pathways is to parse the auditory messages sent by the two cochleae into auditory objects, the segregation and localisation of which constitute an important means of separating target signals from noise and competing sources. When hearing losses are too asymmetric, the patients face a situation in which the monaural exploitation of sound messages signi...