Impact of Music Therapy on Speech Intelligibility in Noise With Cochlear Implants

November 20, 2025 updated by: Armina Kreuzer
The aim of this clinical study is to investigate whether six months of music therapy immediately after CI implantation helps to improve speech intelligibility in noise. To investigate the effect of music therapy, a randomized study will be conducted with a "start group A" and a "delayed group" B (control group 1). Group A will start six months of music therapy immediately after cochlear implantation, group B six months later. A further control group 2 will not receive any music therapy. The speech intelligibility values resulting from the OLSA sentence test will be compared between the three groups after six and twelve months.

Study Overview

Status

Recruiting

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Detailed Description

Improved speech perception is a main objective for any hearing rehabilitation using hearing devices. Even more challenging is speech comprehension in noisy environments.

Music therapy is one of the approaches that can assist users with achieving better performance in situations of difficult listening comprehension such as speech perception in noisy environments. One such music therapy concept developed in Heidelberg is based on the parallelism of language and music, whereby targeted training using musical parameters such as rhythm, pitch and timbre can have an impact on the ability to perceive speech. At present, the fact that music therapy can help improve speech intelligibility is primarily based on research with normal hearing listeners.

Nowadays, cochlear implant technology has the primary goal to restore functional hearing and speech perception in people with bilateral severe-to-profound sensorineural hearing loss. Good results will be achieved by post lingually deafened CI users regarding the understanding of open-set sentences presented in quiet. But our surroundings are rarely quiet. Therefore, the goal of good rehabilitation must be to ensure that CI users also can cope well in our noisy environment. Music therapy is thus intended to be the crucial piece in the puzzle that enables such understanding in noisy situations.

This study aims to investigate the benefits of music therapy for cochlear implant users in terms of their speech intelligibility performance in noise. This is an explorative study to determine suitable parameters such as the time point of starting the music.

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Estimated)

30

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Contact

Study Locations

  • Switzerland
    • Canton of Lucerne
      • Lucerne, Canton of Lucerne, Switzerland, 6000
        • Recruiting
        • Lucerne Cantonal Hospital

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

  • Adult
  • Older Adult

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  1. Patient aged between 18-85 years
  2. Patients who undergo a new CI Implantation
  3. Patients who speak German as their main language

Exclusion Criteria:

1. Patients with congenital deafness

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Treatment
  • Allocation: Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Group A
Group A will begin six months of music therapy immediately after cochlear implantation.
Other: music therapy after Cochlear Implantation
The music therapy is specially designed for the rehabilitation of CI-patients. It focuses on learning to distinguish different sound sources, especially when they occur at the same time. Training involves familiarization with different aspects of music such as rhythm, melody, and pitch while at the same time also getting to know the sound of different musical instruments, including singing. The training is also aimed at learning to concentrate on spoken instructions while the music is going on. This latter aim is fundamental to the goal of this study and plays a central role in the therapy.
Experimental: Group B
Group B is the delayed group and will start music therapy six months after group A.
Other: music therapy after Cochlear Implantation
The music therapy is specially designed for the rehabilitation of CI-patients. It focuses on learning to distinguish different sound sources, especially when they occur at the same time. Training involves familiarization with different aspects of music such as rhythm, melody, and pitch while at the same time also getting to know the sound of different musical instruments, including singing. The training is also aimed at learning to concentrate on spoken instructions while the music is going on. This latter aim is fundamental to the goal of this study and plays a central role in the therapy.
Experimental: Group C
Group C won't receive any music therapy and serves as a control group.
Other: no music therapy after Cochlear Implantation
Group C consists of persons who do not receive any music therapy after Cochlear Implantation.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Speech recognition threshold (SRT50) six month after Cochlear Implantation
Time Frame: six month after Cochlear Implantation
The variable of primary interest is the speech recognition threshold (SRT50), measured in dB SNR (Signal-to-Noise Ratio), which leads to 50% speech understanding, as obtained using the OLSA-test following six months of music therapy immediately after implantation.
six month after Cochlear Implantation

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
values of SRT50 of group A and B at twelve months
Time Frame: twelve months
The question should be clarified as to whether the two groups A and B demonstrate the same improvement after 1 year. The values of the SRT50 of both groups will be compared at twelve months. The results could provide information on whether it makes a difference whether therapy is started immediately after the operation or only after six months.
twelve months
Values of SRT50 of all groups at 12 months
Time Frame: 12 months
It is also of interest whether the values of the SRT50 at twelve months of group C are really significantly different compared to A and B. This will give us an overview regarding the general benefits of music therapy for speech intelligibility in noise for CI users.
12 months
subjective improvements of speech intelligibilty
Time Frame: 6 and 12 months
Subjective improvements in speech intelligibility after music therapy is determined using the HISQUI (Hearing Implant Sound Quality Index) questionnaire. This is a validated questionnaire consisting of 19 items scored on a 7-point Likert scale, for quantifying the self-perceived level of auditory benefit that cochlear implant users experience in everyday listening situations. A total of between 19 and 133 points can be achieved, and, depending on the result, 5 subjective sound quality categories are determined.
6 and 12 months

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Armina Kreuzer

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Helpful Links

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Actual)

June 11, 2025

Primary Completion (Estimated)

February 28, 2027

Study Completion (Estimated)

February 28, 2027

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

December 11, 2024

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

December 11, 2024

First Posted (Actual)

December 16, 2024

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

November 25, 2025

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

November 20, 2025

Last Verified

June 1, 2025

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Other Study ID Numbers

  • Musiktherapie_Erwachsene

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

NO

IPD Plan Description

This is GCP compliant.

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

product manufactured in and exported from the U.S.

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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