© Emily Shannon Fu Foundation
While a cochlear implant provides many patients with excellent speech understanding in quiet, music perception and appreciation remains a challenge for most cochlear implant users. Recent studies have shown that a closed-set melodic contour identification (MCI) task could be used to quantify cochlear implant users’ ability to recognize musical melodies [Galvin, J.J. III, Fu, Q-J., and Nogaki, G. (2007). “Melodic Contour Identification in Cochlear Implants,” Ear and Hearing 28(3), 302-319]. This advanced module provides MIDI-based Melodic Contour Identification Training for CI patients to aid them in improving their recognization of melodies, thereby improving their music appreciation. For the MCI task, test stimuli were melodic contours composed of 5 notes of equal duration whose frequencies corresponded to musical intervals. The interval between successive notes in each contour was varied between 1 and 5 semitones; the “root note” of the contours was also varied. Nine distinct musical patterns were generated for each interval and root note condition. This is a screen shot of the display window. Temporal Patterns for All Instruments: Spectral Patterns for All Instruments:
Angel SoundTM: Melodic Contour Training Semitone Difference Semitone Difference Acoustic and Visual Feedback Acoustic and Visual Feedback Piano Clarinet Glockenspiel Organ Trumpet Violin Tone Piano           Clarinet    Glockenspiel   Organ      Trumpet  Violin       Tone