In this project, Dr Dorothée Arzounian and Dr Charlotte Garcia at the University of Cambridge explore how to better tailor a cochlear implant to individual users, ensuring their best hearing experience and increasing their likelihood to use the implant.
Project start date: July 2025
Project end date: December 2027
About the project
Cochlear implants provide a sensation of hearing to those who have severe to profound hearing loss. Each person with a cochlear implant has a unique hearing status, meaning audiologists often have to make significant adjustments to their implant settings.
It is not always easy to know whether someone is getting the best possible hearing outcome from their implant and ability to perceive speech, music and environmental sounds varies widely. To make sure that everyone who has a cochlear implant can fully benefit from it, we need to find new ways to tailor device settings to a person’s specific needs quickly and objectively.
How it works
In this project, researchers will record brain activity in response to a cochlear implant from three parts of the brain simultaneously – the hearing nerve, the brainstem, and the cortex (all of which play a role in hearing) – in adults with cochlear implants.
They will ask participants to judge the loudness of the sound they hear while recording their brain responses with internal sensors (embedded in the implant) and external sensors placed on the scalp. They will then compare the results they obtain to understand how well they match.
How will this research benefit people with hearing loss?
By studying how responses to sound in different parts of the hearing brain relate to the loudness perceived by a person using a cochlear implant, the researchers hope to develop a tool that audiologists can use to programme cochlear implants to match the user’s individual needs.
This will help more people obtain the best hearing outcomes from their implant and more easily engage with the auditory world around them.
About the researchers
Dr Charlotte Garcia is an Assistant Research Professor and an RNID Research Fellow based in the Cognition & Brain Sciences Unit at the University of Cambridge. This project was awarded RNID Innovation Seed Fund funding in July 2025.
I have numerous family members with significant hearing loss and have watched them recede from their social world as they aged – I want to be doing work that helps people maintain social connections to live meaningful, connected lives.”
Dr Dorothée Arzounian is an Inserm Researcher at the Hearing Institute (Institut de l’Audition, Institut Pasteur / CNRS / Inserm) and an Institut reConnect researcher (Paris, France). She is Visiting Scientist at the University of Cambridge.
I think most people with healthy hearing do not realise to what extent they unconsciously rely on sounds to connect with their environment, navigate the world, and stay safe. All of this makes hearing health a major societal issue.”