Restoring hearing with an auditory midbrain implant in humans – current evidence from cortical event-related potentials

Auditory brainstem implants (ABI) are used to restore speech perception in patients with sensorineural hearing loss. Unfortunately, the ABI has achieved only limited success in patients suffering from neurofibromatosis type 2 (NF2). Recently, a new hearing prosthesis has been developed that stimulates the midbrain at the tonotopically organized inferior colliculus (IC) with a penetrating 20-contact electrode array (AMI – auditory midbrain implant; Cochlea Ltd., Lenarz et al., 2008). We applied the mismatch negativity (MMN) event-related potential (ERP) to measure preattentive subthreshold stimulus detection and…