# Iowa Cochlear Implant Clinical Research Center VIII

> **NIH NIH P50** · UNIVERSITY OF IOWA · 2024 · $2,754,802

## Abstract

Program Director/Principal Investigator (Last, First, Middle): Gantz, Bruce J.
PROJECT SUMMARY - OVERVIEW
Cochlear implants (CI) have become the standard of care for managing profound sensorineural hearing loss.
These devices provide significant improvement in word understanding in quiet but have limitations in noisy
backgrounds. Difficulty understanding speech perception in noise (SiN) in real-world environments is one of
the most common complaints of people with any type of hearing impairment who are seeking hearing
rehabilitation. We believe that the ability to understand SiN is a product of the auditory periphery as well as
plasticity afforded by cortical and cognitive processes. At the level of cortical and cognitive processing, our
prior work has identified a suite of cognitive mechanisms, including figure/ground separation and changes in
lexical processing that interact with the signal quality to impact SiN outcomes. Upon this progress, we now
must expand investigations to better understand the influence of other important factors, such as higher order
cognitive processes (e.g., working memory and executive functioning), with high potential to assist
improvement in SiN abilities among individuals with hearing loss. Furthermore, understanding the effect of
these abilities on communication and socialization in real-world settings and its influence on psychosocial well-
being could have long-term impact on cognitive stability. This grant incorporates a multi-pronged approach to
parse the critical issues at all auditory system levels and as it relates to understanding in real-world listening.
Through utilization of a variety of CI users (e.g., SSD, Bilateral, A+E), we can expand our understanding of: 1)
mechanisms involved in loss of residual acoustic hearing and how those can facilitate better preservation
outcomes; 2) how listeners adapt to and fuse the A+E information to improve hearing in real-world challenging
situations; and 3) whether an individual’s cognitive functioning assist the integration of A+E processing.
Furthermore, we recognize that communication difficulties transcend SiN performance; we will investigate
mechanisms involved with listening in rapid, quiet, or accented speech, reverberant environments, and missing
cues (e.g., wearing face masks). The Iowa Cochlear Implant Clinical Research Center requests competitive
renewal of funding. Four research projects and two cores are proposed in this application. We will leverage the
unique structure of the P50 and our large cohort of CI subjects from our patient registry to develop predictive
models at the group and individual levels incorporating peripheral, cortical, cognitive, and language processing
insights to predict outcomes in real-world challenging listening environments (i.e., natural listening
environments). The four research projects are highly integrated and depend on data from each other to answer
the experimental questions proposed.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10841408
- **Project number:** 5P50DC000242-37
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF IOWA
- **Principal Investigator:** Bruce Jay Gantz
- **Activity code:** P50 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $2,754,802
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 1985-09-15 → 2028-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10841408

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10841408, Iowa Cochlear Implant Clinical Research Center VIII (5P50DC000242-37). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10841408. Licensed CC0.

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