Nucleus Kanso 3

The Cochlear Nexa is the newest generation of the implant array, the part that’s under the scalp and goes into the cochlea.
My implants are the previous generation, the 600 series.

@Raudrive I see, this comes after the Nucleus 8 or whatever his name is, which was out last year or a year before! which is the external processing unit!

The Nexa implants are not out here in the USA that I know of. I believe the N8 processor can be used with the new Nexa implants with an update but not sure. The coming K3 will probably be in the same situation as the N8. This is an educated guess on my part.
Processors are typically reverse compatible with older implants. This allows the patient to get new updated processors without having to replace the implant with surgery.

Yesterday I got to thinking about you and bimodal user using only SCAN programs so I changed to a SCAN program myself. Going to give it a try for a while to see what I think. Initially it’s not much different than the non-SCAN program I have used exclusively.

@Deaf_piper said:

I can’t pick much difference between scan and scan FF.

Auto FF rejects more posterior sounds than regular Scan 2. I found myself too isolated with it, couldn’t tell when things were happening behind me as easily, eg. a car.

Auto FF also isn’t as aggressive at posterior noise rejection as manual FF, so not as useful when talking to someone in a noisy environment.

I’ve therefore reverted to plain ol’ Scan 2 and manually activating FF when needed.

The only other program I use regularly is a manually created one which duplicates my regular Scan 2, but has all noise reduction turned off. I use this when listening to concerts. The soft violin sounds of an ensemble out on stage would be recognised as background noise and therefore suppressed with the regular Scan 2 program; this no longer happens with the specialised program.

I also use the telecoil receiver extensively. And BT streaming.

These are screenshots from the AudiologyOnline webinar about Nucleus 8:

As you can see, SCAN2 changes between directionality patterns (drawn in different colors) depending on the environment.

EDIT:

Analyze the notches: null points have little to no sound reception.

These are:

1. Blue - 1 null point at 180° (perfectly behind your back) but quite much sound reception not only from the front, but also from both sides

2. Red - 2 null points at 120° & 240° and some sound reception behind back

3. Green - 2 null points at 90° & 270° (perfectly on both sides) - most precise to get sound from the front at the expense of also hearing sound from back

END OF THE EDIT

This was a very useful slide. After that, I have gained a better understanding and motivation to use that feature.

It is a pity that in general in the materials available to patients there is little such specific information on this technicalities.

@bcarp said:

I found myself too isolated with it, couldn’t tell when things were happening behind me as easily, eg. a car.

See my previous post. It could explain your issues.

https://assets.cochlear.com/api/public/content/5f197cff440649b2a637a9473a633a3c?v=c72d642a&download=true1

D1913968_3-1_Nucleus 8 Whitepaper_EN-GB.pdf (590.7 KB)

Some info about Forward Focus is also here. However it was heavily concealed, I don’t know why!

From the above screen shot, we can conclude that the manual ForwardFocus is ALWAYS the strongest possible.

That pretty interesting.

I suspect the K3 will also have the same SCAN 2 technology.

I do know the FF on the N7 and K2 does help in certain environments. Its one of those things that later that day you remember that you could have used FF and maybe heard better. Hindsight…

This is also interesting, but not emphasised. In the event of noise occurring in the same location as speech (0° for both speech and noise), there is no difference between N7 and N8.

This is good news Rick. Can I ask how those that are from a 2 processor clinic get on with upgrades? I imagine it would be a difficult process getting all your processors upgraded.

@Deaf_piper said:

This is good news Rick. Can I ask how those that are from a 2 processor clinic get on with upgrades?

Hi Sheryl,

My understanding is the two processor clinics are for the patients initial implant/processor. It’s so that patient has a backup.

When I upgrade I am pretty sure only one processor will be given to me per implant. I will still have the old processors that will hopefully serve as backups.

We are still waiting for the decision in the UK! @Zebras

@Bimodal_user said:

@studio.prawns_0q, thanks. It seems that article is not only about Kanso 3, but also about new Phoenix system and CI1032 and new FMS and SPACE coding strategy.

Actually the Spread precompensation advanced combination encoder is not new. Precompensating for spread of excitation in a cochlear implant coding strategy - PubMed10