Objectives: The purpose of this study was to find a correlation between cochlear implant performances in phoneme discrimination and activity of the brain-stem.
Methods: Electrically-evoked auditory brain-stem responses (EABRs) and speech recognition performances were measured in 17 patients implanted with an MXM Digisonic DX10 cochlear implant. Speech recognition performances without lip-reading were tested using lists of isolated French words containing 3 phonemes.
Results: The results indicated statistically significant correlations between phoneme correct-identification scores and the following EABR variables: wave V latency, wave II-V latency interval and wave III-V latency interval. These results, indicate that up to about 48% of the variance in isolated word recognition without lip-reading can be accounted for by EABR variables.
Conclusion: The quality of brain-stem functioning influences central processes in phoneme discrimination.