Music perception in cochlear implant (CI) users is far from satisfactory, not only because of the technological limitations of current CI devices but also due to the neurophysiological alterations that generally accompany deafness. Early behavioral studies revealed that similar mechanisms underlie musical and lexical pitch perception in CI-based electric hearing. Although neurophysiological studies of the musical pitch perception of English-speaking CI users are actively ongoing, little such research has been conducted with Mandarin-speaking CI users; as Mandarin is a tonal language, these individuals require pitch information to understand speech. The aim of this work was to study the neurophysiological mechanisms accounting for the musical pitch identification abilities of Mandarin-speaking CI users and normal-hearing (NH) listeners. Behavioral and mismatch negativity (MMN) data were analyzed to examine musical pitch processing performance. Moreover, neurophysiological results from CI users with good and bad pitch discrimination performance (according to the just-noticeable differences (JND) and pitch-direction discrimination (PDD) tasks) were compared to identify cortical responses associated with musical pitch perception differences. The MMN experiment was conducted using a passive oddball paradigm, with musical tone C4 (262 Hz) presented as the standard and tones D4 (294 Hz), E4 (330 Hz), G#4 (415 Hz), and C5 (523 Hz) presented as deviants. CI users demonstrated worse musical pitch discrimination ability than did NH listeners, as reflected by larger JND and PDD thresholds for pitch identification, and significantly increased latencies and reduced amplitudes in MMN responses. Good CI performers had better MMN results than did bad performers. Consistent with findings for English-speaking CI users, the results of this work suggest that MMN is a viable marker of cortical pitch perception in Mandarin-speaking CI users.

中文翻译：

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普通话人工耳蜗使用者音乐音高识别的神经生理学研究。

耳蜗植入（CI）用户的音乐感知远不能令人满意，这不仅是由于当前CI设备的技术局限性，而且还由于耳聋通常伴随着神经生理学改变。早期的行为研究表明，类似的机制是基于CI的电子听力中音乐和词汇音高感知的基础。尽管正在积极进行英语CI用户的音调感知的神经生理学研究，但对于普通话CI用户却很少进行此类研究。由于普通话是一种声调语言，因此这些人需要音调信息才能理解语音。这项工作的目的是研究解释普通话CI用户和普通听力（NH）听众的音高识别能力的神经生理机制。行为和不匹配否定性（MMN）数据进行了分析，以检查音高处理性能。此外，比较了具有良好音调识别性能和良好音调识别性能（根据恰到好处的差异（JND）和音高方向识别（PDD）任务）的CI用户的神经生理学结果，以确定与音调感知差异相关的皮质反应。MMN实验是使用被动奇数球范例进行的，以标准音调C4（262 Hz）和音调D4（294 Hz），E4（330 Hz），G＃4（415 Hz）和C5（523 Hz）为标准）表示为异常。CI用户显示出比NH收听者差的音乐音高辨别能力，这反映在音高识别的JND和PDD阈值较大时，并显着提高了MMN响应的延迟和幅度。CI表现优秀的人比MCI表现更好的人。与英语为母语的CI用户的发现一致，这项工作的结果表明，MMN是英语为普通话CI用户的皮质音高感知的可行标记。