• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
• /
• v.28 no.2
• /
• pp.271-279
• /
• 2007

We suggest a novel method for the evaluation of cochlear implant (CI) speech processing strategy based on neural spike train decoding. From formant trajectories of input speech and auditory nerve responses responding to the electrical pulse trains generated from a specific CI speech processing strategy, optimal linear decoding filter was obtained, and used to estimate formant trajectory of incoming speech. Performance of a specific strategy is evaluated by comparing true and estimated formant trajectories. We compared a newly-developed strategy rooted from a closer mimicking of auditory periphery using nonlinear time-varying filter, with a conventional linear-filter-based strategy. It was shown that the formant trajectories could be estimated more exactly in the case of the nonlinear time-varying strategy. The superiority was more prominent when background noise level is high, and the spectral characteristic of the background noise was close to that of speech signals. This confirms the superiority observed from other evaluation methods, such as acoustic simulation and spectral analysis.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers D
• /
• v.54 no.7
• /
• pp.468-474
• /
• 2005

Brain-machine interface (BMI) based on neuronal spike trains is regarded as one of the most promising means to restore basic body functions of severely paralyzed patients. The spike train decoding algorithm, which extracts underlying information of neuronal signals, is essential for the BMI. Previous studies report that a linear filter is effective for this purpose and there is no noteworthy gain from the use of nonlinear mapping algorithms, in spite of the fact that neuronal encoding process is obviously nonlinear. We designed several decoding algorithms based on the linear filter, and two nonlinear mapping algorithms using multilayer perceptron (MLP) and support vector machine regression (SVR), and show that the nonlinear algorithms are superior in general. The MLP often showed unsatisfactory performance especially when it is carelessly trained. The nonlinear SVR showed the highest performance. This may be due to the superiority of the SVR in training and generalization. The advantage of using nonlinear algorithms were more profound for the cases when there are false-positive/negative errors in spike trains.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
• /
• v.28 no.5
• /
• pp.694-702
• /
• 2007

The adaptation effect originating from the chemical synapse between auditory nerve and inner hair cell gives advantage in accurate representation of temporal cues of incoming speech such as speech onset. Thus it is expected that the modification of conventional speech processing strategies of cochlear implant(CI) by incorporating the adaptation effect will result in considerable improvement of speech perception performance such as consonant perception score. Our purpose in this paper was to evaluate our new CI speech processing strategy incorporating the adaptation effect by the observation of auditory nerve responses. By classifying the presence or absence of speech from the auditory nerve responses, i. e. spike trains, we could quantitatively compare speech onset detection performances of conventional and improved strategies. We could verify the effectiveness of the adaptation effect in improving the speech onset representation characteristics.

• Proceedings of the Korean Information Science Society Conference
• /
• 2006.10a
• /
• pp.59-62
• /
• 2006

전산 신경과학은 신경 시스템을 생물물리학, 신경회로, 그리고 시스템 레벨 등 여러 가지 관점에서 크기와 구조를 모델링하여 신경 신호의 전달과 전달되는 정보의 내용을 이해하고자 하는 분야이다. 전산 신경과학은 기존의 생물학적인 신경과학 연구에 대한 보완적인 연구방법으로 이론적이고 계산적인 방법을 사용한다. 본 논문에서는 신경 세포에서 반응 인코딩에 해당되는 신호 발생율(firing rate)과 스파이크 통계(spike statistics)를 설명하고, 신경 세포에서 반응 디코딩에 해당되는 스파이크-트레인 디코딩(spike-train decoding)에 대하여 설명한다.

• The Korean Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology
• /
• v.13 no.3
• /
• pp.221-227
• /
• 2009

For successful restoration of visual function by a visual neural prosthesis such as retinal implant, electrical stimulation should evoke neural responses so that the informat.ion on visual input is properly represented. A stimulation strategy, which means a method for generating stimulation waveforms based on visual input, should be developed for this purpose. We proposed to use the decoding of visual input from retinal ganglion cell (RGC) responses for the evaluation of stimulus encoding strategy. This is based on the assumption that reliable encoding of visual information in RGC responses is required to enable successful visual perception. The main purpose of this study was to determine the influence of inter-dependence among stimulated RGCs activities on decoding accuracy. Light intensity variations were decoded from multiunit RGC spike trains using an optimal linear filter. More accurate decoding was possible when different types of RGCs were used together as input. Decoding accuracy was enhanced with independently firing RGCs compared to synchronously firing RGCs. This implies that stimulation of independently-firing RGCs and RGCs of different types may be beneficial for visual function restoration by retinal prosthesis.