"Scientific and technological background. To date, individuals with sensorineural hearing loss may benefit from either acoustic stimulation (classical hearing aids) or electric stimulation (cochlear implants). Classical hearing aids are best suited to amplify low frequencies and as such, provide important information for the perception of music and sounds in background noise, but do not support high levels of speech understanding. Cochlear implants, on the other hand, by stimulating the middle and high frequencies, enable many profoundly deaf patients to reach high levels of speech intelligibility, but are inadequate for the perception of music. Main objectives of the proposed project: (i) to optimise deaf patients’ hearing experience by developing a new hearing device which combines both types of stimulation in the same ear; (ii) to develop a test battery for prosody reception, i.e. the perception of language rhythm and melody; and (iii) to use this new prosody test battery as a quality measure for the current generation of cochlear implants and classical hearing aids, as well as for the newly developed hybrid electric-acoustic prototype."