A novel envelope extraction algorithm for speech processor of cochlear implants, called adaptation algorithm, was developed which is based on a adaptation effect of the inner hair cell(IHC)/auditory nerve(AN) synapse. We achieved acoustic simulation and hearing experiments with 12 normal hearing persons to compare this adaptation algorithm with existent standard envelope extraction method. The results shows that speech processing strategy using adaptation algorithm showed significant improvements in speech recognition rate under most channel/noise condition, compared to conventional strategy We verified that the proposed adaptation algorithm may yield better speech perception under considerable amount of noise, compared to the conventional speech processing strategy.