Patent ID: 7149583

Claim:
A cochlear stimulation system for capturing and delivering fine time structure (FTS) in incoming sounds, the system comprising: an electrode array, having a multiplicity of electrodes for placing into the cochlea; a stimulator having a multiplicity of stimulation channels connected to the electrode array, said each channel represented by a window or band of frequencies; an envelope extractor for extracting a slowly varying frequency envelope in the incoming sound; an FTS analyzer for estimating the FTS information within a frequency band, the analyzer contained within the stimulator; and a current navigator, for using the identified dominant FTS component at each band of frequency and for steering the stimulation to each point of the cochlea that spatially corresponds to the identified dominant FTS component, wherein the current navigator employs non-simultaneous stimulation, such that a first stimulus at a first electrode is followed immediately by a second stimulus at a second electrode, thereby employing virtual electrodes.