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Best V, Conroy C. Relating monaural and binaural measures of modulation sensitivity in listeners with and without hearing loss. THE JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA 2024; 156:1543-1551. [PMID: 39235271 PMCID: PMC11379497 DOI: 10.1121/10.0028517] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/26/2024] [Accepted: 08/15/2024] [Indexed: 09/06/2024]
Abstract
Listeners are sensitive to interaural time differences carried in the envelope of high-frequency sounds (ITDENV), but the salience of this cue depends on certain properties of the envelope and, in particular, on the presence/depth of amplitude modulation (AM) in the envelope. This study tested the hypothesis that individuals with sensorineural hearing loss, who show enhanced sensitivity to AM under certain conditions, would also show superior ITDENV sensitivity under those conditions. The second hypothesis was that variations in ITDENV sensitivity across individuals can be related to variations in sensitivity to AM. To enable a direct comparison, a standard adaptive AM detection task was used along with a modified version of it designed to measure ITDENV sensitivity. The stimulus was a 4-kHz tone modulated at rates of 32, 64, or 128 Hz and presented at a 30 dB sensation level. Both tasks were attempted by 16 listeners with normal hearing and 16 listeners with hearing loss. Consistent with the hypotheses, AM and ITDENV thresholds were correlated and tended to be better in listeners with hearing loss. A control experiment emphasized that absolute level may be a consideration when interpreting the group effects.
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Affiliation(s)
- Virginia Best
- Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA
| | - Christopher Conroy
- Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA
- Department of Biological and Vision Sciences, State University of New York, College of Optometry, New York, New York 10036, USA
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2
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van den Berg MM, Wong AB, Houtak G, Williamson RS, Borst JGG. Sodium salicylate improves detection of amplitude-modulated sound in mice. iScience 2024; 27:109691. [PMID: 38736549 PMCID: PMC11088340 DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2024.109691] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/11/2023] [Revised: 01/14/2024] [Accepted: 04/05/2024] [Indexed: 05/14/2024] Open
Abstract
Salicylate is commonly used to induce tinnitus in animals, but its underlying mechanism of action is still debated. We therefore tested its effects on the firing properties of neurons in the mouse inferior colliculus (IC). Salicylate induced a large decrease in the spontaneous activity and an increase of ∼20 dB SPL in the minimum threshold of single units. In response to sinusoidally modulated noise (SAM noise) single units showed both an increase in phase locking and improved rate coding. Mice also became better at detecting amplitude modulations, and a simple threshold model based on the IC population response could reproduce this improvement. The responses to dynamic random chords (DRCs) suggested that the improved AM encoding was due to a linearization of the cochlear output, resulting in larger contrasts during SAM noise. These effects of salicylate are not consistent with the presence of tinnitus, but should be taken into account when studying hyperacusis.
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Affiliation(s)
- Maurits M. van den Berg
- Department of Neuroscience, Erasmus MC, University Medical Center Rotterdam, NL-3015 GD Rotterdam, the Netherlands
| | - Aaron B. Wong
- Department of Neuroscience, Erasmus MC, University Medical Center Rotterdam, NL-3015 GD Rotterdam, the Netherlands
| | - Ghais Houtak
- Department of Neuroscience, Erasmus MC, University Medical Center Rotterdam, NL-3015 GD Rotterdam, the Netherlands
| | - Ross S. Williamson
- Pittsburgh Hearing Research Center, Department of Otolaryngology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA
| | - J. Gerard G. Borst
- Department of Neuroscience, Erasmus MC, University Medical Center Rotterdam, NL-3015 GD Rotterdam, the Netherlands
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Regev J, Relaño-Iborra H, Zaar J, Dau T. Disentangling the effects of hearing loss and age on amplitude modulation frequency selectivity. THE JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA 2024; 155:2589-2602. [PMID: 38607268 DOI: 10.1121/10.0025541] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/27/2023] [Accepted: 03/19/2024] [Indexed: 04/13/2024]
Abstract
The processing and perception of amplitude modulation (AM) in the auditory system reflect a frequency-selective process, often described as a modulation filterbank. Previous studies on perceptual AM masking reported similar results for older listeners with hearing impairment (HI listeners) and young listeners with normal hearing (NH listeners), suggesting no effects of age or hearing loss on AM frequency selectivity. However, recent evidence has shown that age, independently of hearing loss, adversely affects AM frequency selectivity. Hence, this study aimed to disentangle the effects of hearing loss and age. A simultaneous AM masking paradigm was employed, using a sinusoidal carrier at 2.8 kHz, narrowband noise modulation maskers, and target modulation frequencies of 4, 16, 64, and 128 Hz. The results obtained from young (n = 3, 24-30 years of age) and older (n = 10, 63-77 years of age) HI listeners were compared to previously obtained data from young and older NH listeners. Notably, the HI listeners generally exhibited lower (unmasked) AM detection thresholds and greater AM frequency selectivity than their NH counterparts in both age groups. Overall, the results suggest that age negatively affects AM frequency selectivity for both NH and HI listeners, whereas hearing loss improves AM detection and AM selectivity, likely due to the loss of peripheral compression.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jonathan Regev
- Hearing Systems Section, Department of Health Technology, Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, 2800, Denmark
| | - Helia Relaño-Iborra
- Hearing Systems Section, Department of Health Technology, Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, 2800, Denmark
| | - Johannes Zaar
- Hearing Systems Section, Department of Health Technology, Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, 2800, Denmark
- Eriksholm Research Centre, Snekkersten, 3070, Denmark
| | - Torsten Dau
- Hearing Systems Section, Department of Health Technology, Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, 2800, Denmark
- Copenhagen Hearing and Balance Center, Copenhagen University Hospital, Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen, 2100, Denmark
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4
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Regev J, Zaar J, Relaño-Iborra H, Dau T. Age-related reduction of amplitude modulation frequency selectivity. THE JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA 2023; 153:2298. [PMID: 37092934 DOI: 10.1121/10.0017835] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/16/2022] [Accepted: 03/27/2023] [Indexed: 05/03/2023]
Abstract
The perception of amplitude modulations (AMs) has been characterized by a frequency-selective process in the temporal envelope domain and simulated in computational auditory processing and perception models using a modulation filterbank. Such AM frequency-selective processing has been argued to be critical for the perception of complex sounds, including speech. This study aimed at investigating the effects of age on behavioral AM frequency selectivity in young (n = 11, 22-29 years) versus older (n = 10, 57-77 years) listeners with normal hearing, using a simultaneous AM masking paradigm with a sinusoidal carrier (2.8 kHz), target modulation frequencies of 4, 16, 64, and 128 Hz, and narrowband-noise modulation maskers. A reduction of AM frequency selectivity by a factor of up to 2 was found in the older listeners. While the observed AM selectivity co-varied with the unmasked AM detection sensitivity, the age-related broadening of the masked threshold patterns remained stable even when AM sensitivity was similar across groups for an extended stimulus duration. The results from the present study might provide a valuable basis for further investigations exploring the effects of age and reduced AM frequency selectivity on complex sound perception as well as the interaction of age and hearing impairment on AM processing and perception.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jonathan Regev
- Hearing Systems Section, Department of Health Technology, Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, 2800, Denmark
| | - Johannes Zaar
- Eriksholm Research Centre, Snekkersten, 3070, Denmark
| | - Helia Relaño-Iborra
- Hearing Systems Section, Department of Health Technology, Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, 2800, Denmark
| | - Torsten Dau
- Hearing Systems Section, Department of Health Technology, Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, 2800, Denmark
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5
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Füllgrabe C. Auditory Biases in Cognitive Assessment: Insights from a Hearing-Loss Simulation for the Screening of Dementia due to Alzheimer's Disease. J Alzheimers Dis 2023; 91:537-541. [PMID: 36463440 DOI: 10.3233/jad-215695] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Abstract
Cognitive-screening tests are used to detect pathological changes in mental abilities. Many use orally presented instructions and test items. Hence, hearing loss (HL), whose prevalence increases with age, may bias cognitive-test performance in the target population for the screening of dementia due to Alzheimer's disease. To study the effect of the auditory test format, an impairment-simulation approach was used in normal-hearing listeners to compare performance on the Hopkins Verbal Learning Test, a memory task employed in dementia screening and research, when test items were unprocessed and processed to simulate age-related HL. Immediate verbal recall declined with simulated HL, suggesting that auditory factors are confounding variables in cognitive assessment and result in the underestimation of cognitive functioning.
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Schlittenlacher J, Lim JX, Lawson J, Moore BC. Modulation masking produced by a low-frequency pure tone. Hear Res 2022; 424:108596. [DOI: 10.1016/j.heares.2022.108596] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/25/2022] [Revised: 06/08/2022] [Accepted: 08/01/2022] [Indexed: 11/04/2022]
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Alkharabsheh A, Aboudi O, Abdulbaqi K, Garadat S. The effect of wearing face mask on speech intelligibility in listeners with sensorineural hearing loss and normal hearing sensitivity. Int J Audiol 2022; 62:328-333. [PMID: 35235469 DOI: 10.1080/14992027.2022.2045366] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/27/2022]
Abstract
OBJECTIVE This study aimed to investigate the effect of wearing a face mask on word recognition in hearing-impaired listeners. DESIGN Word recognition scores were obtained in quiet and in different signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs 0, +5, and +10 dB) using two listening conditions (with N95 mask and with no-mask). STUDY SAMPLE Participants were forty-six listeners with normal hearing sensitivity and thirty-nine listeners with mild to moderately severe sensorineural hearing loss. RESULTS Results showed that wearing a face mask affected word recognition and that this effect was greater for listeners with hearing impairment than that observed for listeners with normal hearing sensitivity. The extent of this effect was also dependent on the SNR conditions such that the effect of wearing a face mask was worse in adverse listening conditions. CONCLUSIONS Overall, this study demonstrated that face mask can disrupt speech intelligibility possibly by degrading some acoustical features which may pose substantial difficulties for those with hearing impairment.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ana'am Alkharabsheh
- Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences, Faculty of Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan
| | - Ola Aboudi
- Ear Nose and Throat Clinic, University of Jordan Hospital, University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan
| | - Khader Abdulbaqi
- Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences, Faculty of Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan.,Ear Nose and Throat Clinic, University of Jordan Hospital, University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan
| | - Soha Garadat
- Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences, Faculty of Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan
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Scheuregger O, Hjortkjær J, Dau T. Identification and Discrimination of Sound Textures in Hearing-Impaired and Older Listeners. Trends Hear 2021; 25:23312165211065608. [PMID: 34939472 PMCID: PMC8721370 DOI: 10.1177/23312165211065608] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/17/2022] Open
Abstract
Sound textures are a broad class of sounds defined by their homogeneous temporal structure. It has been suggested that sound texture perception is mediated by time-averaged summary statistics measured from early stages of the auditory system. The ability of young normal-hearing (NH) listeners to identify synthetic sound textures increases as the statistics of the synthetic texture approach those of its real-world counterpart. In sound texture discrimination, young NH listeners utilize the fine temporal stimulus information for short-duration stimuli, whereas they switch to a time-averaged statistical representation as the stimulus' duration increases. The present study investigated how younger and older listeners with a sensorineural hearing impairment perform in the corresponding texture identification and discrimination tasks in which the stimuli were amplified to compensate for the individual listeners' loss of audibility. In both hearing impaired (HI) listeners and NH controls, sound texture identification performance increased as the number of statistics imposed during the synthesis stage increased, but hearing impairment was accompanied by a significant reduction in overall identification accuracy. Sound texture discrimination performance was measured across listener groups categorized by age and hearing loss. Sound texture discrimination performance was unaffected by hearing loss at all excerpt durations. The older listeners' sound texture and exemplar discrimination performance decreased for signals of short excerpt duration, with older HI listeners performing better than older NH listeners. The results suggest that the time-averaged statistic representations of sound textures provide listeners with cues which are robust to the effects of age and sensorineural hearing loss.
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Affiliation(s)
- Oliver Scheuregger
- Hearing Systems Section, Department of Health Technology, 5205Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark
| | - Jens Hjortkjær
- Hearing Systems Section, Department of Health Technology, 5205Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark.,Danish Research Centre for Magnetic Resonance, Centre for Functional and Diagnostic Imaging and Research, Copenhagen University Hospital Hvidovre, Kettegård Allé 30, DK-2650 Hvidovre, Denmark
| | - Torsten Dau
- Hearing Systems Section, Department of Health Technology, 5205Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark
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9
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Patro C, Kreft HA, Wojtczak M. The search for correlates of age-related cochlear synaptopathy: Measures of temporal envelope processing and spatial release from speech-on-speech masking. Hear Res 2021; 409:108333. [PMID: 34425347 PMCID: PMC8424701 DOI: 10.1016/j.heares.2021.108333] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/02/2020] [Revised: 07/17/2021] [Accepted: 08/04/2021] [Indexed: 01/13/2023]
Abstract
Older adults often experience difficulties understanding speech in adverse listening conditions. It has been suggested that for listeners with normal and near-normal audiograms, these difficulties may, at least in part, arise from age-related cochlear synaptopathy. The aim of this study was to assess if performance on auditory tasks relying on temporal envelope processing reveal age-related deficits consistent with those expected from cochlear synaptopathy. Listeners aged 20 to 66 years were tested using a series of psychophysical, electrophysiological, and speech-perception measures using stimulus configurations that promote coding by medium- and low-spontaneous-rate auditory-nerve fibers. Cognitive measures of executive function were obtained to control for age-related cognitive decline. Results from the different tests were not significantly correlated with each other despite a presumed reliance on common mechanisms involved in temporal envelope processing. Only gap-detection thresholds for a tone in noise and spatial release from speech-on-speech masking were significantly correlated with age. Increasing age was related to impaired cognitive executive function. Multivariate regression analyses showed that individual differences in hearing sensitivity, envelope-based measures, and scores from nonauditory cognitive tests did not significantly contribute to the variability in spatial release from speech-on-speech masking for small target/masker spatial separation, while age was a significant contributor.
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Affiliation(s)
- Chhayakanta Patro
- Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, N640 Elliott Hall, 75 East River Parkway, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA.
| | - Heather A Kreft
- Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, N640 Elliott Hall, 75 East River Parkway, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA
| | - Magdalena Wojtczak
- Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, N640 Elliott Hall, 75 East River Parkway, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA
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10
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Herrmann B, Butler BE. Hearing loss and brain plasticity: the hyperactivity phenomenon. Brain Struct Funct 2021; 226:2019-2039. [PMID: 34100151 DOI: 10.1007/s00429-021-02313-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 23] [Impact Index Per Article: 7.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/03/2020] [Accepted: 06/03/2021] [Indexed: 12/22/2022]
Abstract
Many aging adults experience some form of hearing problems that may arise from auditory peripheral damage. However, it has been increasingly acknowledged that hearing loss is not only a dysfunction of the auditory periphery but also results from changes within the entire auditory system, from periphery to cortex. Damage to the auditory periphery is associated with an increase in neural activity at various stages throughout the auditory pathway. Here, we review neurophysiological evidence of hyperactivity, auditory perceptual difficulties that may result from hyperactivity, and outline open conceptual and methodological questions related to the study of hyperactivity. We suggest that hyperactivity alters all aspects of hearing-including spectral, temporal, spatial hearing-and, in turn, impairs speech comprehension when background sound is present. By focusing on the perceptual consequences of hyperactivity and the potential challenges of investigating hyperactivity in humans, we hope to bring animal and human electrophysiologists closer together to better understand hearing problems in older adulthood.
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Affiliation(s)
- Björn Herrmann
- Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest, Toronto, ON, M6A 2E1, Canada. .,Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
| | - Blake E Butler
- Department of Psychology & The Brain and Mind Institute, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada.,National Centre for Audiology, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada
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11
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Ruiz R, Fontan L, Fillol H, Füllgrabe C. Senescent Decline in Verbal-Emotion Identification by Older Hearing-Impaired Listeners - Do Hearing Aids Help? Clin Interv Aging 2020; 15:2073-2081. [PMID: 33173288 PMCID: PMC7648619 DOI: 10.2147/cia.s281469] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/12/2020] [Accepted: 10/14/2020] [Indexed: 11/23/2022] Open
Abstract
Purpose To assess the ability of older-adult hearing-impaired (OHI) listeners to identify verbal expressions of emotions, and to evaluate whether hearing-aid (HA) use improves identification performance in those listeners. Methods Twenty-nine OHI listeners, who were experienced bilateral-HA users, participated in the study. They listened to a 20-sentence-long speech passage rendered with six different emotional expressions (“happiness”, “pleasant surprise”, “sadness”, “anger”, “fear”, and “neutral”). The task was to identify the emotion portrayed in each version of the passage. Listeners completed the task twice in random order, once unaided, and once wearing their own bilateral HAs. Seventeen young-adult normal-hearing (YNH) listeners were also tested unaided as controls. Results Most YNH listeners (89.2%) correctly identified emotions compared to just over half of the OHI listeners (58.7%). Within the OHI group, verbal emotion identification was significantly correlated with age, but not with audibility-related factors. The number of OHI listeners who were able to correctly identify the different emotions did not significantly change when HAs were worn (54.8%). Conclusion In line with previous investigations using shorter speech stimuli, there were clear age differences in the recognition of verbal emotions, with OHI listeners showing a significant reduction in unaided verbal-emotion identification performance that progressively declined with age across older adulthood. Rehabilitation through HAs did not provide compensation for the impaired ability to perceive emotions carried by speech sounds.
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Affiliation(s)
- Robert Ruiz
- Laboratoire de Recherche en Audiovisuel (LARA-SEPPIA), Université Toulouse II Jean Jaurès, Toulouse, France
| | | | - Hugo Fillol
- Service d'Oto-Rhino-Laryngologie, d'Oto-Neurologie et d'ORL Pédiatrique, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Toulouse, Toulouse, France.,Ecole d'Audioprothèse de Cahors, Université Toulouse III Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France
| | - Christian Füllgrabe
- School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences, Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK
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12
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Decruy L, Vanthornhout J, Francart T. Hearing impairment is associated with enhanced neural tracking of the speech envelope. Hear Res 2020; 393:107961. [PMID: 32470864 DOI: 10.1016/j.heares.2020.107961] [Citation(s) in RCA: 44] [Impact Index Per Article: 11.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/22/2019] [Revised: 02/07/2020] [Accepted: 03/31/2020] [Indexed: 10/24/2022]
Abstract
Elevated hearing thresholds in hearing impaired adults are usually compensated by providing amplification through a hearing aid. In spite of restoring hearing sensitivity, difficulties with understanding speech in noisy environments often remain. One main reason is that sensorineural hearing loss not only causes loss of audibility but also other deficits, including peripheral distortion but also central temporal processing deficits. To investigate the neural consequences of hearing impairment in the brain underlying speech-in-noise difficulties, we compared EEG responses to natural speech of 14 hearing impaired adults with those of 14 age-matched normal-hearing adults. We measured neural envelope tracking to sentences and a story masked by different levels of a stationary noise or competing talker. Despite their sensorineural hearing loss, hearing impaired adults showed higher neural envelope tracking of the target than the competing talker, similar to their normal-hearing peers. Furthermore, hearing impairment was related to an additional increase in neural envelope tracking of the target talker, suggesting that hearing impaired adults may have an enhanced sensitivity to envelope modulations or require a larger differential neural tracking of target versus competing talker to segregate speech from noise. Lastly, both normal-hearing and hearing impaired participants showed an increase in neural envelope tracking with increasing speech understanding. Hence, our results open avenues towards new clinical applications, such as neuro-steered prostheses as well as objective and automatic measurements of speech understanding performance.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lien Decruy
- KU Leuven, Department of Neurosciences, ExpORL, Herestraat 49 Bus 721, B-3000, Leuven, Belgium.
| | - Jonas Vanthornhout
- KU Leuven, Department of Neurosciences, ExpORL, Herestraat 49 Bus 721, B-3000, Leuven, Belgium.
| | - Tom Francart
- KU Leuven, Department of Neurosciences, ExpORL, Herestraat 49 Bus 721, B-3000, Leuven, Belgium.
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13
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Kim S, Choi I, Schwalje AT, Kim K, Lee JH. Auditory Working Memory Explains Variance in Speech Recognition in Older Listeners Under Adverse Listening Conditions. Clin Interv Aging 2020; 15:395-406. [PMID: 32231429 PMCID: PMC7085334 DOI: 10.2147/cia.s241976] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/12/2019] [Accepted: 02/13/2020] [Indexed: 12/27/2022] Open
Abstract
Introduction Older listeners have difficulty understanding speech in unfavorable listening conditions. To compensate for acoustic degradation, cognitive processing skills, such as working memory, need to be engaged. Despite prior findings on the association between working memory and speech recognition in various listening conditions, it is not yet clear whether the modality of stimuli presentation for working memory tasks should be auditory or visual. Given the modality-specific characteristics of working memory, we hypothesized that auditory working memory capacity could predict speech recognition performance in adverse listening conditions for older listeners and that the contribution of auditory working memory to speech recognition would depend on the task and listening condition. Methods Seventy-six older listeners and twenty younger listeners completed four kinds of auditory working memory tasks, including digit and speech span tasks, and sentence recognition tasks in four different listening conditions having multi-talker noise and time-compression. For older listeners, cognitive function was screened using the Mini-Mental Status Examination, and audibility was assured. Results Auditory working memory, as measured by listening span, significantly predicted speech recognition performance in adverse listening conditions for older listeners. A linear regression model showed speech recognition performance for older listeners could be explained by auditory working memory whilst controlling for the impact of age and hearing sensitivity. Discussion Measuring working memory in the auditory modality facilitated explaining the variance in speech recognition in adverse listening conditions for older listeners. The linguistic features and the complexity of the auditory stimuli may affect the association between working memory and speech recognition performance. Conclusion We demonstrated the contribution of auditory working memory to speech recognition in unfavorable listening conditions in older populations. Taking the modality-specific characteristics of working memory into account may be a key to better understand the difficulty in speech recognition in daily listening conditions for older listeners.
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Affiliation(s)
- Subong Kim
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA
| | - Inyong Choi
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA.,Department of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery, University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA
| | - Adam T Schwalje
- Department of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery, University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA
| | - KyooSang Kim
- Department of Occupational Environmental Medicine, Seoul Medical Centerr, Seoul 02053, South Korea
| | - Jae Hee Lee
- Department of Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology, HUGS Center for Hearing and Speech Research, Hallym University of Graduate Studies, Seoul 06197, South Korea
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14
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Fontan L, Cretin-Maitenaz T, Füllgrabe C. Predicting Speech Perception in Older Listeners with Sensorineural Hearing Loss Using Automatic Speech Recognition. Trends Hear 2020; 24:2331216520914769. [PMID: 32233834 PMCID: PMC7119229 DOI: 10.1177/2331216520914769] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/21/2019] [Revised: 02/16/2020] [Accepted: 03/02/2020] [Indexed: 11/17/2022] Open
Abstract
The objective of this study was to provide proof of concept that the speech intelligibility in quiet of unaided older hearing-impaired (OHI) listeners can be predicted by automatic speech recognition (ASR). Twenty-four OHI listeners completed three speech-identification tasks using speech materials of varying linguistic complexity and predictability (i.e., logatoms, words, and sentences). An ASR system was first trained on different speech materials and then used to recognize the same speech stimuli presented to the listeners but processed to mimic some of the perceptual consequences of age-related hearing loss experienced by each of the listeners: the elevation of hearing thresholds (by linear filtering), the loss of frequency selectivity (by spectrally smearing), and loudness recruitment (by raising the amplitude envelope to a power). Independently of the size of the lexicon used in the ASR system, strong to very strong correlations were observed between human and machine intelligibility scores. However, large root-mean-square errors (RMSEs) were observed for all conditions. The simulation of frequency selectivity loss had a negative impact on the strength of the correlation and the RMSE. Highest correlations and smallest RMSEs were found for logatoms, suggesting that the prediction system reflects mostly the functioning of the peripheral part of the auditory system. In the case of sentences, the prediction of human intelligibility was significantly improved by taking into account cognitive performance. This study demonstrates for the first time that ASR, even when trained on intact independent speech material, can be used to estimate trends in speech intelligibility of OHI listeners.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Tom Cretin-Maitenaz
- Service d’Oto-Rhino-Laryngologie, d’Oto-Neurologie et d’ORL Pédiatrique, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Toulouse, France
- Ecole d’Audioprothèse de Cahors, Université Paul Sabatier Toulouse III, France
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15
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Halliday LF, Rosen S, Tuomainen O, Calcus A. Impaired frequency selectivity and sensitivity to temporal fine structure, but not envelope cues, in children with mild-to-moderate sensorineural hearing loss. THE JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA 2019; 146:4299. [PMID: 31893709 DOI: 10.1121/1.5134059] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/01/2019] [Accepted: 10/24/2019] [Indexed: 06/10/2023]
Abstract
Psychophysical thresholds were measured for 8-16 year-old children with mild-to-moderate sensorineural hearing loss (MMHL; N = 46) on a battery of auditory processing tasks that included measures designed to be dependent upon frequency selectivity and sensitivity to temporal fine structure (TFS) or envelope cues. Children with MMHL who wore hearing aids were tested in both unaided and aided conditions, and all were compared to a group of normally hearing (NH) age-matched controls. Children with MMHL performed more poorly than NH controls on tasks considered to be dependent upon frequency selectivity, sensitivity to TFS, and speech discrimination (/bɑ/-/dɑ/), but not on tasks measuring sensitivity to envelope cues. Auditory processing deficits remained regardless of age, were observed in both unaided and aided conditions, and could not be attributed to differences in nonverbal IQ or attention between groups. However, better auditory processing in children with MMHL was predicted by better audiometric thresholds and, for aided tasks only, higher levels of maternal education. These results suggest that, as for adults with MMHL, children with MMHL may show deficits in frequency selectivity and sensitivity to TFS, but sensitivity to the envelope may remain intact.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lorna F Halliday
- Speech, Hearing, and Phonetic Sciences, University College London, Chandler House, 2 Wakefield Street, London WC1N 1PF, United Kingdom
| | - Stuart Rosen
- Speech, Hearing, and Phonetic Sciences, University College London, Chandler House, 2 Wakefield Street, London WC1N 1PF, United Kingdom
| | - Outi Tuomainen
- Speech, Hearing, and Phonetic Sciences, University College London, Chandler House, 2 Wakefield Street, London WC1N 1PF, United Kingdom
| | - Axelle Calcus
- Speech, Hearing, and Phonetic Sciences, University College London, Chandler House, 2 Wakefield Street, London WC1N 1PF, United Kingdom
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Moore BCJ. Effect of age on envelope regularity discrimination. THE JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA 2019; 146:1207. [PMID: 31472568 DOI: 10.1121/1.5122794] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/08/2019] [Accepted: 07/31/2019] [Indexed: 06/10/2023]
Abstract
The ability to discriminate irregular from regular amplitude modulation was compared for young and older adults with audiometric thresholds within the normal range for frequencies from 250 to 8000 Hz, using the "envelope regularity discrimination" (ERD) test. The amount of irregularity was parametrically varied and quantified by an "irregularity index." The carrier frequency was 2000 Hz, the modulation rate was 8 Hz, and the baseline modulation index was 0.3. Stimuli were presented both at 80 dB sound pressure level (SPL) and at 20 dB sensation level (SL) in the presence of a threshold-equalizing noise. There was a significant effect of level, performance being better at 80 dB SPL than at 20 dB SL. There was also a significant effect of age, performance being worse for the older subjects. There was no significant interaction of level and age. The thresholds for the ERD test were not significantly correlated with absolute thresholds at the test carrier frequency of 2000 Hz, for either group, or for the two groups combined. The worse envelope regularity discrimination for the older group may be related to the age-related synaptopathy that has been established from recent studies of human temporal bones.
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Affiliation(s)
- Brian C J Moore
- Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3EB, United Kingdom
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17
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Moore BCJ, Sęk AP, Füllgrabe C. Envelope regularity discrimination. THE JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA 2019; 145:2861. [PMID: 31153343 DOI: 10.1121/1.5100620] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/30/2019] [Accepted: 04/16/2019] [Indexed: 06/09/2023]
Abstract
The ability to discriminate irregular from regular amplitude modulation was assessed using the "envelope regularity discrimination" test. The amount of irregularity was parametrically varied and quantified by an "irregularity index." Normative data were gathered for young subjects with normal audiometric thresholds. Parameters varied were the carrier and modulation frequencies, fc and fm, and the baseline modulation index, m. All tests were performed using a background threshold-equalizing noise. The main findings were (1) using fc = 4000 Hz, fm = 8 Hz, and m = 0.3, performance improved over the first two threshold runs and then remained roughly stable, and there was a high correlation between thresholds obtained at 80 dB sound pressure level (SPL) and at 20 dB sensation level; (2) using fm = 8 Hz and m = 0.3 with a level of 80 dB SPL, thresholds did not vary significantly across fc = 1000, 2000, and 4000 Hz; (3) using fm = 8 Hz and fc = 4000 Hz with a level of 80 dB SPL, thresholds did not vary significantly for m from 0.2 to 0.5; and (4) using m = 0.3 and fc = 4000 Hz with a level of 80 dB SPL, thresholds improved with increasing fm from 2 to 16 Hz. For all conditions, there was substantial individual variability, probably resulting from differences in "processing efficiency."
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Affiliation(s)
- Brian C J Moore
- Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3EB, United Kingdom
| | - Aleksander P Sęk
- Institute of Acoustics, Faculty of Physics, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland
| | - Christian Füllgrabe
- School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences, Loughborough University, Ashby Road, Loughborough, Leicestershire LE11 3TU, United Kingdom
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18
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Jensen KK, Bernstein JGW. The fluctuating masker benefit for normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners with equal audibility at a fixed signal-to-noise ratio. THE JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA 2019; 145:2113. [PMID: 31046298 PMCID: PMC6472958 DOI: 10.1121/1.5096641] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/10/2023]
Abstract
Normal-hearing (NH) listeners can extract and integrate speech fragments from momentary dips in the level of a fluctuating masker, yielding a fluctuating-masker benefit (FMB) for speech understanding relative to a stationary-noise masker. Hearing-impaired (HI) listeners generally show less FMB, suggesting a dip-listening deficit attributable to suprathreshold spectral or temporal distortion. However, reduced FMB might instead result from different test signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs), reduced absolute audibility of otherwise unmasked speech segments, or age differences. This study examined the FMB for nine age-matched NH-HI listener pairs, while simultaneously equalizing audibility, SNR, and percentage-correct performance in stationary noise. Nonsense syllables were masked by stationary noise, 4- or 32-Hz sinusoidally amplitude-modulated noise (SAMN), or an opposite-gender interfering talker. Stationary-noise performance was equalized by adjusting the response-set size. Audibility was equalized by removing stimulus components falling below the HI absolute threshold. HI listeners showed a clear 4.5-dB reduction in FMB for 32-Hz SAMN, a similar FMB to NH listeners for 4-Hz SAMN, and a non-significant trend toward a 2-dB reduction in FMB for an interfering talker. These results suggest that HI listeners do not exhibit a general dip-listening deficit for all fluctuating maskers, but rather a specific temporal-resolution deficit affecting performance for high-rate modulated maskers.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kenneth Kragh Jensen
- National Military Audiology and Speech Pathology Center, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, 4954 North Palmer Road, Bethesda, Maryland 20889, USA
| | - Joshua G W Bernstein
- National Military Audiology and Speech Pathology Center, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, 4954 North Palmer Road, Bethesda, Maryland 20889, USA
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Hao W, Wang Q, Li L, Qiao Y, Gao Z, Ni D, Shang Y. Effects of Phase-Locking Deficits on Speech Recognition in Older Adults With Presbycusis. Front Aging Neurosci 2018; 10:397. [PMID: 30574084 PMCID: PMC6291518 DOI: 10.3389/fnagi.2018.00397] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/04/2018] [Accepted: 11/19/2018] [Indexed: 12/05/2022] Open
Abstract
Objective: People with presbycusis (PC) often report difficulties in speech recognition, especially under noisy listening conditions. Investigating the PC-related changes in central representations of envelope signals and temporal fine structure (TFS) signals of speech sounds is critical for understanding the mechanism underlying the PC-related deficit in speech recognition. Frequency-following responses (FFRs) to speech stimulation can be used to examine the subcortical encoding of both envelope and TFS speech signals. This study compared FFRs to speech signals between listeners with PC and those with clinically normal hearing (NH) under either quiet or noise-masking conditions. Methods: FFRs to a 170-ms speech syllable /da/ were recorded under either a quiet or noise-masking (with a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 8 dB) condition in 14 older adults with PC and 13 age-matched adults with NH. The envelope (FFRENV) and TFS (FFRTFS) components of FFRs were analyzed separately by adding and subtracting the alternative polarity responses, respectively. Speech recognition in noise was evaluated in each participant. Results: In the quiet condition, compared with the NH group, the PC group exhibited smaller F0 and H3 amplitudes and decreased stimulus-response (S-R) correlation for FFRENV but not for FFRTFS. Both the H2 and H3 amplitudes and the S-R correlation of FFRENV significantly decreased in the noise condition compared with the quiet condition in the NH group but not in the PC group. Moreover, the degree of hearing loss was correlated with noise-induced changes in FFRTFS morphology. Furthermore, the speech-in-noise (SIN) threshold was negatively correlated with the noise-induced change in H2 (for FFRENV) and the S-R correlation for FFRENV in the quiet condition. Conclusion: Audibility affects the subcortical encoding of both envelope and TFS in PC patients. The impaired ability to adjust the balance between the envelope and TFS in the noise condition may be part of the mechanism underlying PC-related deficits in speech recognition in noise. FFRs can predict SIN perception performance.
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Affiliation(s)
- Wenyang Hao
- Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, China
| | - Qian Wang
- Epilepsy Center, Department of Clinical Psychology, Sanbo Brain Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China
| | - Liang Li
- School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences and Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, Speech and Hearing Research Center, Key Laboratory on Machine Perception (Ministry of Education), Peking University, Beijing, China
| | - Yufei Qiao
- Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, China
| | - Zhiqiang Gao
- Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, China
| | - Daofeng Ni
- Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, China
| | - Yingying Shang
- Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, China
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20
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Feng T, Chen Q, Xiao Z. Age-Related Differences in the Effects of Masker Cuing on Releasing Chinese Speech From Informational Masking. Front Psychol 2018; 9:1922. [PMID: 30356784 PMCID: PMC6189421 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01922] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/12/2018] [Accepted: 09/18/2018] [Indexed: 11/22/2022] Open
Abstract
The aims of the present study were to examine whether familiarity with a masker improves word recognition in speech masking situations and whether there are age-related differences in the effects of masker cuing. Thirty-two older listeners (range = 59–74; mean age = 66.41 years) with high-frequency hearing loss and 32 younger normal-hearing listeners (range = 21–28; mean age = 23.73) participated in this study, all of whom spoke Chinese as their first language. Two experiments were conducted and 16 younger and 16 older listeners were used in each experiment. The masking speech with different content from target speech with syntactically correct but semantically meaningless was a continuous recording of meaningless Chinese sentences spoken by two talkers. The masker level was adjusted to produce signal-to-masker ratios of -12, -8, -4, and 0 dB for the younger participants and -8, -4, 0, and 4 dB for the older participants. Under masker-priming conditions, a priming sentence, spoken by the masker talkers, was presented in quiet three times before a target sentence was presented together with a masker sentence 4 s later. In Experiment 1, using same-sentence masker-priming (identical to the masker sentence), the masker-priming improved the identification of the target sentence for both age groups compared to when no priming was provided. However, the amount of masking release was less in the older adults than in the younger adults. In Experiment 2, two kinds of primes were considered: same-sentence masker-priming, and different-sentence masker-priming (different from the masker sentence in content for each keyword). The results of Experiment 2 showed that both kinds of primes improved the identification of the targets for both age groups. However, the release from speech masking in both priming conditions was less in the older adults than in the younger adults, and the release from speech masking in both age groups was greater with same-sentence masker-priming than with different-sentence masker-priming. These results suggest that both the voice and content cues of a masker could be used to release target speech from maskers in noisy listening conditions. Furthermore, there was an age-related decline in masker-priming-induced release from speech masking.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tianquan Feng
- College of Teacher Education, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China.,State Key Laboratory of Bioelectronics, School of Biological Science and Medical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, China
| | - Qingrong Chen
- School of Psychology, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China
| | - Zhongdang Xiao
- State Key Laboratory of Bioelectronics, School of Biological Science and Medical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, China
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21
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Walton JP, Dziorny AC, Vasilyeva ON, Luebke AE. Loss of the Cochlear Amplifier Prestin Reduces Temporal Processing Efficacy in the Central Auditory System. Front Cell Neurosci 2018; 12:291. [PMID: 30297983 PMCID: PMC6160587 DOI: 10.3389/fncel.2018.00291] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/09/2018] [Accepted: 08/14/2018] [Indexed: 11/24/2022] Open
Abstract
Active mechanical amplification of sound occurs in cochlear outer hair cells (OHCs) that change their length with oscillations of their membrane potential. Such length changes are the proposed cellular source of the cochlear amplifier, and prestin is the motor protein responsible for OHC electromotility. Previous findings have shown that mice lacking prestin displayed a loss of OHC electromotility, subsequent loss of distortion-product otoacoustic emissions, and a 40–60 dB increase in hearing thresholds. In this study we were interested in studying the functional consequences of the complete loss of cochlear amplification on neural coding of frequency selectivity, tuning, and temporal processing in the auditory midbrain. We recorded near-field auditory evoked potentials and multi-unit activity from the inferior colliculus (IC) of prestin (−/−) null and prestin (+/+) wild-type control mice and determined frequency response areas (FRAs), tuning sharpness, and gap detection to tone bursts and silent gaps embedded in broadband noise. We were interested in determining if the moderate to severe sensorineural hearing loss associated with the loss of motor protein prestin would also impair auditory midbrain temporal-processing measures, or if compensatory mechanisms within the brainstem could compensate for the loss of prestin. In prestin knockout mice we observed that there are severe impairments in midbrain tuning, thresholds, excitatory drive, and gap detection suggesting that brainstem and midbrain processing could not overcome the auditory processing deficits afforded by the loss of OHC electromotility mediated by the prestin protein.
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Affiliation(s)
- Joseph P Walton
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, United States.,Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, United States.,Global Center for Hearing and Speech Research, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, United States
| | - Adam C Dziorny
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, United States
| | - Olga N Vasilyeva
- Department of Neuroscience, The Ernest J. Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, NY, United States
| | - Anne E Luebke
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, United States.,Department of Neuroscience, The Ernest J. Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, NY, United States
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22
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Füllgrabe C, Sęk AP, Moore BCJ. Senescent Changes in Sensitivity to Binaural Temporal Fine Structure. Trends Hear 2018; 22:2331216518788224. [PMID: 30027803 PMCID: PMC6055238 DOI: 10.1177/2331216518788224] [Citation(s) in RCA: 18] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/02/2018] [Revised: 06/11/2018] [Accepted: 06/12/2018] [Indexed: 11/26/2022] Open
Abstract
Differences in the temporal fine structure (TFS) of sounds at the two ears are used for sound localization and for the perceptual analysis of complex auditory scenes. The ability to process this binaural TFS information is poorer for older than for younger participants, and this may contribute to age-related declines in the ability to understand speech in noisy situations. However, it is unclear how sensitivity to binaural TFS changes across the older age range. This article presents data for a test of binaural sensitivity to TFS, the "TFS-adaptive frequency" (AF) test, for 118 listeners aged 60 to 96 years with normal or near-normal low-frequency hearing, but a variety of patterns of hearing loss at higher frequencies. TFS-AF scores were significantly lower (i.e., poorer) than those for young adults. On average, scores decreased by about 162 Hz for each 10-year increase in age over the range 60 to 85 years. Individual variability increased with increasing age. Scores also declined as low-frequency audiometric thresholds worsened. The results illustrate the range of scores that can be obtained as a function of age and may be useful for the diagnosis and management of age-related hearing difficulties.
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Affiliation(s)
- Christian Füllgrabe
- Medical Research Council Institute of Hearing Research, School of Medicine, University of Nottingham, UK
| | - Aleksander P. Sęk
- Institute of Acoustics, Faculty of Physics, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland
- Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, UK
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23
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Prendergast G, Millman RE, Guest H, Munro KJ, Kluk K, Dewey RS, Hall DA, Heinz MG, Plack CJ. Effects of noise exposure on young adults with normal audiograms II: Behavioral measures. Hear Res 2017; 356:74-86. [PMID: 29126651 PMCID: PMC5714059 DOI: 10.1016/j.heares.2017.10.007] [Citation(s) in RCA: 83] [Impact Index Per Article: 11.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/10/2017] [Revised: 10/17/2017] [Accepted: 10/23/2017] [Indexed: 12/24/2022]
Abstract
An estimate of lifetime noise exposure was used as the primary predictor of performance on a range of behavioral tasks: frequency and intensity difference limens, amplitude modulation detection, interaural phase discrimination, the digit triplet speech test, the co-ordinate response speech measure, an auditory localization task, a musical consonance task and a subjective report of hearing ability. One hundred and thirty-eight participants (81 females) aged 18-36 years were tested, with a wide range of self-reported noise exposure. All had normal pure-tone audiograms up to 8 kHz. It was predicted that increased lifetime noise exposure, which we assume to be concordant with noise-induced cochlear synaptopathy, would elevate behavioral thresholds, in particular for stimuli with high levels in a high spectral region. However, the results showed little effect of noise exposure on performance. There were a number of weak relations with noise exposure across the test battery, although many of these were in the opposite direction to the predictions, and none were statistically significant after correction for multiple comparisons. There were also no strong correlations between electrophysiological measures of synaptopathy published previously and the behavioral measures reported here. Consistent with our previous electrophysiological results, the present results provide no evidence that noise exposure is related to significant perceptual deficits in young listeners with normal audiometric hearing. It is possible that the effects of noise-induced cochlear synaptopathy are only measurable in humans with extreme noise exposures, and that these effects always co-occur with a loss of audiometric sensitivity.
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Affiliation(s)
- Garreth Prendergast
- Manchester Centre for Audiology and Deafness, University of Manchester, Manchester Academic Health Science Centre, M13 9PL, UK.
| | - Rebecca E Millman
- Manchester Centre for Audiology and Deafness, University of Manchester, Manchester Academic Health Science Centre, M13 9PL, UK; NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Centre, Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Manchester Academic Health Science Centre, Manchester, M13 9WL, UK
| | - Hannah Guest
- Manchester Centre for Audiology and Deafness, University of Manchester, Manchester Academic Health Science Centre, M13 9PL, UK
| | - Kevin J Munro
- Manchester Centre for Audiology and Deafness, University of Manchester, Manchester Academic Health Science Centre, M13 9PL, UK; NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Centre, Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Manchester Academic Health Science Centre, Manchester, M13 9WL, UK
| | - Karolina Kluk
- Manchester Centre for Audiology and Deafness, University of Manchester, Manchester Academic Health Science Centre, M13 9PL, UK; NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Centre, Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Manchester Academic Health Science Centre, Manchester, M13 9WL, UK
| | - Rebecca S Dewey
- Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nottingham Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK; National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre, Nottingham, NG1 5DU, UK; Otology and Hearing Group, Division of Clinical Neuroscience, School of Medicine, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, NG7 2UH, UK
| | - Deborah A Hall
- National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre, Nottingham, NG1 5DU, UK; Otology and Hearing Group, Division of Clinical Neuroscience, School of Medicine, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, NG7 2UH, UK
| | - Michael G Heinz
- Department of Speech, Language, & Hearing Sciences and Biomedical Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, 47907, USA
| | - Christopher J Plack
- Manchester Centre for Audiology and Deafness, University of Manchester, Manchester Academic Health Science Centre, M13 9PL, UK; NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Centre, Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Manchester Academic Health Science Centre, Manchester, M13 9WL, UK; Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, Lancaster, LA1 4YF, UK
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Fontan L, Ferrané I, Farinas J, Pinquier J, Tardieu J, Magnen C, Gaillard P, Aumont X, Füllgrabe C. Automatic Speech Recognition Predicts Speech Intelligibility and Comprehension for Listeners With Simulated Age-Related Hearing Loss. JOURNAL OF SPEECH, LANGUAGE, AND HEARING RESEARCH : JSLHR 2017; 60:2394-2405. [PMID: 28793162 DOI: 10.1044/2017_jslhr-s-16-0269] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/24/2016] [Accepted: 03/14/2017] [Indexed: 06/07/2023]
Abstract
PURPOSE The purpose of this article is to assess speech processing for listeners with simulated age-related hearing loss (ARHL) and to investigate whether the observed performance can be replicated using an automatic speech recognition (ASR) system. The long-term goal of this research is to develop a system that will assist audiologists/hearing-aid dispensers in the fine-tuning of hearing aids. METHOD Sixty young participants with normal hearing listened to speech materials mimicking the perceptual consequences of ARHL at different levels of severity. Two intelligibility tests (repetition of words and sentences) and 1 comprehension test (responding to oral commands by moving virtual objects) were administered. Several language models were developed and used by the ASR system in order to fit human performances. RESULTS Strong significant positive correlations were observed between human and ASR scores, with coefficients up to .99. However, the spectral smearing used to simulate losses in frequency selectivity caused larger declines in ASR performance than in human performance. CONCLUSION Both intelligibility and comprehension scores for listeners with simulated ARHL are highly correlated with the performances of an ASR-based system. In the future, it needs to be determined if the ASR system is similarly successful in predicting speech processing in noise and by older people with ARHL.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lionel Fontan
- Archean Technologies, Montauban, France
- IRIT - Université de Toulouse, France
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | - Christian Füllgrabe
- Medical Research Council Institute of Hearing Research, School of Medicine, The University of Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, UK
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25
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Wallaert N, Moore BCJ, Ewert SD, Lorenzi C. Sensorineural hearing loss enhances auditory sensitivity and temporal integration for amplitude modulation. THE JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA 2017; 141:971. [PMID: 28253641 DOI: 10.1121/1.4976080] [Citation(s) in RCA: 29] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/06/2023]
Abstract
Amplitude-modulation detection thresholds (AMDTs) were measured at 40 dB sensation level for listeners with mild-to-moderate sensorineural hearing loss (age: 50-64 yr) for a carrier frequency of 500 Hz and rates of 2 and 20 Hz. The number of modulation cycles, N, varied between two and nine. The data were compared with AMDTs measured for young and older normal-hearing listeners [Wallaert, Moore, and Lorenzi (2016). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 139, 3088-3096]. As for normal-hearing listeners, AMDTs were lower for the 2-Hz than for the 20-Hz rate, and AMDTs decreased with increasing N. AMDTs were lower for hearing-impaired listeners than for normal-hearing listeners, and the effect of increasing N was greater for hearing-impaired listeners. A computational model based on the modulation-filterbank concept and a template-matching decision strategy was developed to account for the data. The psychophysical and simulation data suggest that the loss of amplitude compression in the impaired cochlea is mainly responsible for the enhanced sensitivity and temporal integration of temporal envelope cues found for hearing-impaired listeners. The data also suggest that, for AM detection, cochlear damage is associated with increased internal noise, but preserved short-term memory and decision mechanisms.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nicolas Wallaert
- UMR CNRS LSP 8248, Institut d'Etude de la Cognition, Ecole normale supérieure, Paris Sciences et Lettres Research University, 29 rue d'Ulm, 75005 Paris, France
| | - Brian C J Moore
- Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3EB, United Kingdom
| | - Stephan D Ewert
- Medizinische Physik and Cluster of Excellence Hearing4All, Universität Oldenburg, 26111 Oldenburg, Germany
| | - Christian Lorenzi
- UMR CNRS LSP 8248, Institut d'Etude de la Cognition, Ecole normale supérieure, Paris Sciences et Lettres Research University, 29 rue d'Ulm, 75005 Paris, France
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26
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Schlittenlacher J, Moore BCJ. Discrimination of amplitude-modulation depth by subjects with normal and impaired hearing. THE JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA 2016; 140:3487. [PMID: 27908066 DOI: 10.1121/1.4966117] [Citation(s) in RCA: 17] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/28/2023]
Abstract
The loudness recruitment associated with cochlear hearing loss increases the perceived amount of amplitude modulation (AM), called "fluctuation strength." For normal-hearing (NH) subjects, fluctuation strength "saturates" when the AM depth is high. If such saturation occurs for hearing-impaired (HI) subjects, they may show poorer AM depth discrimination than NH subjects when the reference AM depth is high. To test this hypothesis, AM depth discrimination of a 4-kHz sinusoidal carrier, modulated at a rate of 4 or 16 Hz, was measured in a two-alternative forced-choice task for reference modulation depths, mref, of 0.5, 0.6, and 0.7. AM detection was assessed using mref = 0. Ten older HI subjects, and five young and five older NH subjects were tested. Psychometric functions were measured using five target modulation depths for each mref. For AM depth discrimination, the HI subjects performed more poorly than the NH subjects, both at 30 dB sensation level (SL) and 75 dB sound pressure level (SPL). However, for AM detection, the HI subjects performed better than the NH subjects at 30 dB SL; there was no significant difference between the HI and NH groups at 75 dB SPL. The results for the NH subjects were not affected by age.
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Affiliation(s)
- Josef Schlittenlacher
- Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3EB, England
| | - Brian C J Moore
- Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3EB, England
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Temporal cues and the effect of their enhancement on speech perception in older adults - A scoping review. J Otol 2016; 11:95-101. [PMID: 29937817 PMCID: PMC6002599 DOI: 10.1016/j.joto.2016.08.001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/17/2016] [Revised: 08/18/2016] [Accepted: 08/22/2016] [Indexed: 11/21/2022] Open
Abstract
Temporal envelope is a low frequency amplitude modulation conveying segmental and suprasegmental information during speech perception. Unfortunately, we seldom find ourselves in completely quiet listening environments and noise, commonly found in the surrounding environment, obscures both the fine structure cues and partly the temporal envelope cues in speech. Available temporal content of speech emanating from noise is often enough to convey required information in normal hearing individuals. However, the case is different in older adults (with and without hearing loss) who lack such capabilities due to the impairment in temporal processing. This calls attention of a researcher to delineate the importance of temporal enhancement of speech in improving speech perception. There are many temporal envelope strategies available in the literature, but each one has its own lacunae. An envelope enhancement by a deep band modulation (DBM) is found to be beneficial for those individuals who have had a temporal processing impairment. The reason could be attributed to the 15 dB enhancement in the temporal envelope bandwidth between 3 and 30 Hz, extracted from each channel, which significantly increases the modulation depth such that masking of a consonant by a vowel is minimized. Additionally, output of deep band modulated speech is rescaled such that its duration increases and it provides relatively easy access to the word of the lexicon. Thus, in the near future, with more experiments related to DBM algorithm, it can be utilized in the rehabilitative devices to lessen the impact of the temporal processing impairment.
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Füllgrabe C, Rosen S. On The (Un)importance of Working Memory in Speech-in-Noise Processing for Listeners with Normal Hearing Thresholds. Front Psychol 2016; 7:1268. [PMID: 27625615 PMCID: PMC5003928 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01268] [Citation(s) in RCA: 113] [Impact Index Per Article: 14.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/29/2016] [Accepted: 08/09/2016] [Indexed: 12/29/2022] Open
Abstract
With the advent of cognitive hearing science, increased attention has been given to individual differences in cognitive functioning and their explanatory power in accounting for inter-listener variability in the processing of speech in noise (SiN). The psychological construct that has received much interest in recent years is working memory. Empirical evidence indeed confirms the association between WM capacity (WMC) and SiN identification in older hearing-impaired listeners. However, some theoretical models propose that variations in WMC are an important predictor for variations in speech processing abilities in adverse perceptual conditions for all listeners, and this notion has become widely accepted within the field. To assess whether WMC also plays a role when listeners without hearing loss process speech in adverse listening conditions, we surveyed published and unpublished studies in which the Reading-Span test (a widely used measure of WMC) was administered in conjunction with a measure of SiN identification, using sentence material routinely used in audiological and hearing research. A meta-analysis revealed that, for young listeners with audiometrically normal hearing, individual variations in WMC are estimated to account for, on average, less than 2% of the variance in SiN identification scores. This result cautions against the (intuitively appealing) assumption that individual variations in WMC are predictive of SiN identification independently of the age and hearing status of the listener.
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Affiliation(s)
- Christian Füllgrabe
- Medical Research Council Institute of Hearing Research, The University of NottinghamNottingham, UK
| | - Stuart Rosen
- Speech,Hearing and Phonetic Sciences, University College LondonLondon, UK
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Paraouty N, Ewert SD, Wallaert N, Lorenzi C. Interactions between amplitude modulation and frequency modulation processing: Effects of age and hearing loss. THE JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA 2016; 140:121. [PMID: 27475138 DOI: 10.1121/1.4955078] [Citation(s) in RCA: 20] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/06/2023]
Abstract
Frequency modulation (FM) and amplitude modulation (AM) detection thresholds were measured for a 500-Hz carrier frequency and a 5-Hz modulation rate. For AM detection, FM at the same rate as the AM was superimposed with varying FM depth. For FM detection, AM at the same rate was superimposed with varying AM depth. The target stimuli always contained both amplitude and frequency modulations, while the standard stimuli only contained the interfering modulation. Young and older normal-hearing listeners, as well as older listeners with mild-to-moderate sensorineural hearing loss were tested. For all groups, AM and FM detection thresholds were degraded in the presence of the interfering modulation. AM detection with and without interfering FM was hardly affected by either age or hearing loss. While aging had an overall detrimental effect on FM detection with and without interfering AM, there was a trend that hearing loss further impaired FM detection in the presence of AM. Several models using optimal combination of temporal-envelope cues at the outputs of off-frequency filters were tested. The interfering effects could only be predicted for hearing-impaired listeners. This indirectly supports the idea that, in addition to envelope cues resulting from FM-to-AM conversion, normal-hearing listeners use temporal fine-structure cues for FM detection.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nihaad Paraouty
- Laboratoire des Systèmes Perceptifs (CNRS UMR 8248), Institut d'Etude de la Cognition, Ecole normale supérieure, Paris Sciences et Lettres Research University, 29 rue d'Ulm, 75005 Paris, France
| | - Stephan D Ewert
- Medizinische Physik and Cluster of Excellence Hearing4All, Universität Oldenburg, 26111 Oldenburg, Germany
| | - Nicolas Wallaert
- Laboratoire des Systèmes Perceptifs (CNRS UMR 8248), Institut d'Etude de la Cognition, Ecole normale supérieure, Paris Sciences et Lettres Research University, 29 rue d'Ulm, 75005 Paris, France
| | - Christian Lorenzi
- Laboratoire des Systèmes Perceptifs (CNRS UMR 8248), Institut d'Etude de la Cognition, Ecole normale supérieure, Paris Sciences et Lettres Research University, 29 rue d'Ulm, 75005 Paris, France
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Marsh JE, Campbell TA. Processing Complex Sounds Passing through the Rostral Brainstem: The New Early Filter Model. Front Neurosci 2016; 10:136. [PMID: 27242396 PMCID: PMC4861936 DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2016.00136] [Citation(s) in RCA: 18] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/27/2015] [Accepted: 03/17/2016] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
The rostral brainstem receives both “bottom-up” input from the ascending auditory system and “top-down” descending corticofugal connections. Speech information passing through the inferior colliculus of elderly listeners reflects the periodicity envelope of a speech syllable. This information arguably also reflects a composite of temporal-fine-structure (TFS) information from the higher frequency vowel harmonics of that repeated syllable. The amplitude of those higher frequency harmonics, bearing even higher frequency TFS information, correlates positively with the word recognition ability of elderly listeners under reverberatory conditions. Also relevant is that working memory capacity (WMC), which is subject to age-related decline, constrains the processing of sounds at the level of the brainstem. Turning to the effects of a visually presented sensory or memory load on auditory processes, there is a load-dependent reduction of that processing, as manifest in the auditory brainstem responses (ABR) evoked by to-be-ignored clicks. Wave V decreases in amplitude with increases in the visually presented memory load. A visually presented sensory load also produces a load-dependent reduction of a slightly different sort: The sensory load of visually presented information limits the disruptive effects of background sound upon working memory performance. A new early filter model is thus advanced whereby systems within the frontal lobe (affected by sensory or memory load) cholinergically influence top-down corticofugal connections. Those corticofugal connections constrain the processing of complex sounds such as speech at the level of the brainstem. Selective attention thereby limits the distracting effects of background sound entering the higher auditory system via the inferior colliculus. Processing TFS in the brainstem relates to perception of speech under adverse conditions. Attentional selectivity is crucial when the signal heard is degraded or masked: e.g., speech in noise, speech in reverberatory environments. The assumptions of a new early filter model are consistent with these findings: A subcortical early filter, with a predictive selectivity based on acoustical (linguistic) context and foreknowledge, is under cholinergic top-down control. A prefrontal capacity limitation constrains this top-down control as is guided by the cholinergic processing of contextual information in working memory.
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Affiliation(s)
- John E Marsh
- School of Psychology, University of Central LancashirePreston, UK; Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, University of GävleGävle, Sweden
| | - Tom A Campbell
- Neuroscience Center, University of Helsinki Helsinki, Finland
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Brennan M, McCreery R, Kopun J, Lewis D, Alexander J, Stelmachowicz P. Masking Release in Children and Adults With Hearing Loss When Using Amplification. JOURNAL OF SPEECH, LANGUAGE, AND HEARING RESEARCH : JSLHR 2016; 59:110-21. [PMID: 26540194 PMCID: PMC4867924 DOI: 10.1044/2015_jslhr-h-14-0105] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/14/2014] [Accepted: 10/23/2015] [Indexed: 05/09/2023]
Abstract
PURPOSE This study compared masking release for adults and children with normal hearing and hearing loss. For the participants with hearing loss, masking release using simulated hearing aid amplification with 2 different compression speeds (slow, fast) was compared. METHOD Sentence recognition in unmodulated noise was compared with recognition in modulated noise (masking release). Recognition was measured for participants with hearing loss using individualized amplification via the hearing-aid simulator. RESULTS Adults with hearing loss showed greater masking release than the children with hearing loss. Average masking release was small (1 dB) and did not depend on hearing status. Masking release was comparable for slow and fast compression. CONCLUSIONS The use of amplification in this study contrasts with previous studies that did not use amplification. The results suggest that when differences in audibility are reduced, participants with hearing loss may be able to take advantage of dips in the noise levels, similar to participants with normal hearing. Although children required a more favorable signal-to-noise ratio than adults for both unmodulated and modulated noise, masking release was not statistically different. However, the ability to detect a difference may have been limited by the small amount of masking release observed.
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Kortlang S, Mauermann M, Ewert SD. Suprathreshold auditory processing deficits in noise: Effects of hearing loss and age. Hear Res 2016; 331:27-40. [DOI: 10.1016/j.heares.2015.10.004] [Citation(s) in RCA: 36] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/13/2015] [Revised: 10/05/2015] [Accepted: 10/07/2015] [Indexed: 11/15/2022]
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Won JH, Moon IJ, Jin S, Park H, Woo J, Cho YS, Chung WH, Hong SH. Spectrotemporal Modulation Detection and Speech Perception by Cochlear Implant Users. PLoS One 2015; 10:e0140920. [PMID: 26485715 PMCID: PMC4617902 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0140920] [Citation(s) in RCA: 18] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/10/2015] [Accepted: 10/01/2015] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
Spectrotemporal modulation (STM) detection performance was examined for cochlear implant (CI) users. The test involved discriminating between an unmodulated steady noise and a modulated stimulus. The modulated stimulus presents frequency modulation patterns that change in frequency over time. In order to examine STM detection performance for different modulation conditions, two different temporal modulation rates (5 and 10 Hz) and three different spectral modulation densities (0.5, 1.0, and 2.0 cycles/octave) were employed, producing a total 6 different STM stimulus conditions. In order to explore how electric hearing constrains STM sensitivity for CI users differently from acoustic hearing, normal-hearing (NH) and hearing-impaired (HI) listeners were also tested on the same tasks. STM detection performance was best in NH subjects, followed by HI subjects. On average, CI subjects showed poorest performance, but some CI subjects showed high levels of STM detection performance that was comparable to acoustic hearing. Significant correlations were found between STM detection performance and speech identification performance in quiet and in noise. In order to understand the relative contribution of spectral and temporal modulation cues to speech perception abilities for CI users, spectral and temporal modulation detection was performed separately and related to STM detection and speech perception performance. The results suggest that that slow spectral modulation rather than slow temporal modulation may be important for determining speech perception capabilities for CI users. Lastly, test–retest reliability for STM detection was good with no learning. The present study demonstrates that STM detection may be a useful tool to evaluate the ability of CI sound processing strategies to deliver clinically pertinent acoustic modulation information.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jong Ho Won
- Division of Ophthalmic and Ear, Nose and Throat Devices, Office of Device Evaluation, Center for Devices and Radiological Health, US Food and Drug Administration, Silver Spring, Maryland, United States of America
| | - Il Joon Moon
- Department of Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, 135-710, Republic of Korea
- * E-mail:
| | - Sunhwa Jin
- Department of Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, 135-710, Republic of Korea
| | - Heesung Park
- Department of Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, 135-710, Republic of Korea
| | - Jihwan Woo
- School of Electrical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, University of Ulsan, Ulsan 680-749, Republic of Korea
| | - Yang-Sun Cho
- Department of Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, 135-710, Republic of Korea
| | - Won-Ho Chung
- Department of Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, 135-710, Republic of Korea
| | - Sung Hwa Hong
- Department of Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, 135-710, Republic of Korea
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Lentz JJ, Valentine S. Across-frequency processing of modulation phase differences in hearing-impaired listeners. THE JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA 2015; 138:EL205-EL211. [PMID: 26428814 PMCID: PMC4560714 DOI: 10.1121/1.4929624] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/30/2015] [Revised: 06/19/2015] [Accepted: 08/12/2015] [Indexed: 06/05/2023]
Abstract
Two experiments tested the influence of hearing impairment (HI) on representing across-frequency temporal coherence. In one experiment, HI listeners demonstrated similar abilities to normal-hearing listeners in detecting across-frequency differences in modulation phase. In another, spectral-shape discrimination was detrimentally affected by modulation phase disparities imposed on spectral components. Spectral-shape discrimination by HI listeners was less influenced by the disparities, suggesting that hearing loss alters the representation of envelope phase. Results suggest that multiple approaches may be necessary to determine alterations associated with hearing loss—detection tasks may not be sufficient to elucidate distortions to temporal envelope associated with hearing loss.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jennifer J Lentz
- Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana 47405, USA ,
| | - Susie Valentine
- Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana 47405, USA ,
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35
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Füllgrabe C, Moore BCJ, Stone MA. Age-group differences in speech identification despite matched audiometrically normal hearing: contributions from auditory temporal processing and cognition. Front Aging Neurosci 2015; 6:347. [PMID: 25628563 PMCID: PMC4292733 DOI: 10.3389/fnagi.2014.00347] [Citation(s) in RCA: 235] [Impact Index Per Article: 26.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/03/2014] [Accepted: 12/23/2014] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Hearing loss with increasing age adversely affects the ability to understand speech, an effect that results partly from reduced audibility. The aims of this study were to establish whether aging reduces speech intelligibility for listeners with normal audiograms, and, if so, to assess the relative contributions of auditory temporal and cognitive processing. Twenty-one older normal-hearing (ONH; 60-79 years) participants with bilateral audiometric thresholds ≤ 20 dB HL at 0.125-6 kHz were matched to nine young (YNH; 18-27 years) participants in terms of mean audiograms, years of education, and performance IQ. Measures included: (1) identification of consonants in quiet and in noise that was unmodulated or modulated at 5 or 80 Hz; (2) identification of sentences in quiet and in co-located or spatially separated two-talker babble; (3) detection of modulation of the temporal envelope (TE) at frequencies 5-180 Hz; (4) monaural and binaural sensitivity to temporal fine structure (TFS); (5) various cognitive tests. Speech identification was worse for ONH than YNH participants in all types of background. This deficit was not reflected in self-ratings of hearing ability. Modulation masking release (the improvement in speech identification obtained by amplitude modulating a noise background) and spatial masking release (the benefit obtained from spatially separating masker and target speech) were not affected by age. Sensitivity to TE and TFS was lower for ONH than YNH participants, and was correlated positively with speech-in-noise (SiN) identification. Many cognitive abilities were lower for ONH than YNH participants, and generally were correlated positively with SiN identification scores. The best predictors of the intelligibility of SiN were composite measures of cognition and TFS sensitivity. These results suggest that declines in speech perception in older persons are partly caused by cognitive and perceptual changes separate from age-related changes in audiometric sensitivity.
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | - Michael A. Stone
- School of Psychological Sciences, University of ManchesterManchester, UK
- Central Manchester NHS Hospitals Foundation TrustManchester, UK
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36
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Ives DT, Kalluri S, Strelcyk O, Sheft S, Miermont F, Coez A, Bizaguet E, Lorenzi C. Effects of noise reduction on AM perception for hearing-impaired listeners. J Assoc Res Otolaryngol 2014; 15:839-48. [PMID: 24899379 DOI: 10.1007/s10162-014-0466-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/15/2013] [Accepted: 05/08/2014] [Indexed: 11/28/2022] Open
Abstract
Noise reduction (NR) systems are commonplace in modern digital hearing aids. Though not improving speech intelligibility, NR helps the hearing-aid user in terms of lowering noise annoyance, reducing cognitive load and improving ease of listening. Previous psychophysical work has shown that NR does in fact improve the ability of normal-hearing (NH) listeners to discriminate the slow amplitude-modulation (AM) cues representative of those found in speech. The goal of this study was to assess whether this improvement of AM discrimination with NR can also be observed for hearing-impaired (HI) listeners. AM discrimination was measured at two audio frequencies of 500 Hz and 2 kHz in a background noise with a signal-to-noise ratio of 12 dB. Discrimination was measured for ten HI and ten NH listeners with and without NR processing. The HI listeners had a moderate sensorineural hearing loss of about 50 dB HL at 2 kHz and normal hearing (≤ 20 dB HL) at 500 Hz. The results showed that most of the HI listeners tended to benefit from NR at 500 Hz but not at 2 kHz. However, statistical analyses showed that HI listeners did not benefit significantly from NR at any frequency region. In comparison, the NH listeners showed a significant benefit from NR at both frequencies. For each condition, the fidelity of AM transmission was quantified by a computational model of early auditory processing. The parameters of the model were adjusted separately for the two groups (NH and HI) of listeners. The AM discrimination performance of the HI group (with and without NR) was best captured by a model simulating the loss of the fast-acting amplitude compression applied by the normal cochlea. This suggests that the lack of benefit from NR for HI listeners results from loudness recruitment.
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Affiliation(s)
- D Timothy Ives
- Ecole Normale Supérieure, Institut d'Etude de la Cognition, Paris Sciences et Lettres, 75005, Paris, France,
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Zhong Z, Henry KS, Heinz MG. Sensorineural hearing loss amplifies neural coding of envelope information in the central auditory system of chinchillas. Hear Res 2013; 309:55-62. [PMID: 24315815 DOI: 10.1016/j.heares.2013.11.006] [Citation(s) in RCA: 47] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/23/2013] [Revised: 11/12/2013] [Accepted: 11/20/2013] [Indexed: 11/27/2022]
Abstract
People with sensorineural hearing loss often have substantial difficulty understanding speech under challenging listening conditions. Behavioral studies suggest that reduced sensitivity to the temporal structure of sound may be responsible, but underlying neurophysiological pathologies are incompletely understood. Here, we investigate the effects of noise-induced hearing loss on coding of envelope (ENV) structure in the central auditory system of anesthetized chinchillas. ENV coding was evaluated noninvasively using auditory evoked potentials recorded from the scalp surface in response to sinusoidally amplitude modulated tones with carrier frequencies of 1, 2, 4, and 8 kHz and a modulation frequency of 140 Hz. Stimuli were presented in quiet and in three levels of white background noise. The latency of scalp-recorded ENV responses was consistent with generation in the auditory midbrain. Hearing loss amplified neural coding of ENV at carrier frequencies of 2 kHz and above. This result may reflect enhanced ENV coding from the periphery and/or an increase in the gain of central auditory neurons. In contrast to expectations, hearing loss was not associated with a stronger adverse effect of increasing masker intensity on ENV coding. The exaggerated neural representation of ENV information shown here at the level of the auditory midbrain helps to explain previous findings of enhanced sensitivity to amplitude modulation in people with hearing loss under some conditions. Furthermore, amplified ENV coding may potentially contribute to speech perception problems in people with cochlear hearing loss by acting as a distraction from more salient acoustic cues, particularly in fluctuating backgrounds.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ziwei Zhong
- Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, Purdue University, 206 South Martin Jischke Drive, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA
| | - Kenneth S Henry
- Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, Purdue University, 500 Oval Drive, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA
| | - Michael G Heinz
- Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, Purdue University, 206 South Martin Jischke Drive, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA; Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, Purdue University, 500 Oval Drive, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA.
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Gnansia D, Lazard DS, Léger AC, Fugain C, Lancelin D, Meyer B, Lorenzi C. Role of slow temporal modulations in speech identification for cochlear implant users. Int J Audiol 2013; 53:48-54. [PMID: 24195655 DOI: 10.3109/14992027.2013.844367] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/13/2022]
Abstract
OBJECTIVE This study aimed to assess whether the capacity of cochlear implant (CI) users to identify speech is determined by their capacity to perceive slow (< 20 Hz) temporal modulations. DESIGN This was achieved by studying the correlation between (1) phoneme identification in quiet and in a steady-state or fluctuating (8 Hz) noises, and (2) amplitude-modulation detection thresholds (MDTs) at 8 Hz (i.e. slow temporal modulations). STUDY SAMPLE Twenty-one CI users, unilaterally implanted with the same device, were tested in free field with their everyday clinical processor. RESULTS Extensive variability across subjects was observed for both phoneme identification and MDTs. Vowel and consonant identification scores in quiet were significantly correlated with MDTs at 8 Hz (r = - 0.47 for consonants, r = - 0.44 for vowels; p < 0.05). When the masker was a steady-state noise, only consonant identification scores tended to correlate with MDTs at 8 Hz (r = - 0.4; p = 0.07). When the masker was a fluctuating noise, consonant and vowel identification scores were not significantly correlated with MDTs at 8 Hz. CONCLUSIONS Sensitivity to slow amplitude modulations is correlated with vowel and consonant perception in CI users. However, reduced sensitivity to slow modulations does not entirely explain the limited capacity of CI recipients to understand speech in noise.
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Anderson S, Parbery-Clark A, White-Schwoch T, Drehobl S, Kraus N. Effects of hearing loss on the subcortical representation of speech cues. THE JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA 2013; 133:3030-8. [PMID: 23654406 PMCID: PMC3663860 DOI: 10.1121/1.4799804] [Citation(s) in RCA: 90] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/15/2023]
Abstract
Individuals with sensorineural hearing loss often report frustration with speech being loud but not clear, especially in background noise. Despite advanced digital technology, hearing aid users may resort to removing their hearing aids in noisy environments due to the perception of excessive loudness. In an animal model, sensorineural hearing loss results in greater auditory nerve coding of the stimulus envelope, leading to a relative deficit of stimulus fine structure. Based on the hypothesis that brainstem encoding of the temporal envelope is greater in humans with sensorineural hearing loss, speech-evoked brainstem responses were recorded in normal hearing and hearing impaired age-matched groups of older adults. In the hearing impaired group, there was a disruption in the balance of envelope-to-fine structure representation compared to that of the normal hearing group. This imbalance may underlie the difficulty experienced by individuals with sensorineural hearing loss when trying to understand speech in background noise. This finding advances the understanding of the effects of sensorineural hearing loss on central auditory processing of speech in humans. Moreover, this finding has clinical potential for developing new amplification or implantation technologies, and in developing new training regimens to address this relative deficit of fine structure representation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Samira Anderson
- Northwestern University, Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, Communication Sciences, 2240 North Campus Drive, Evanston, Illinois 60208, USA
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40
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Henry KS, Heinz MG. Effects of sensorineural hearing loss on temporal coding of narrowband and broadband signals in the auditory periphery. Hear Res 2013; 303:39-47. [PMID: 23376018 DOI: 10.1016/j.heares.2013.01.014] [Citation(s) in RCA: 33] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/14/2012] [Revised: 12/11/2012] [Accepted: 01/15/2013] [Indexed: 10/27/2022]
Abstract
People with sensorineural hearing loss have substantial difficulty understanding speech under degraded listening conditions. Behavioral studies suggest that this difficulty may be caused by changes in auditory processing of the rapidly-varying temporal fine structure (TFS) of acoustic signals. In this paper, we review the presently known effects of sensorineural hearing loss on processing of TFS and slower envelope modulations in the peripheral auditory system of mammals. Cochlear damage has relatively subtle effects on phase locking by auditory-nerve fibers to the temporal structure of narrowband signals under quiet conditions. In background noise, however, sensorineural loss does substantially reduce phase locking to the TFS of pure-tone stimuli. For auditory processing of broadband stimuli, sensorineural hearing loss has been shown to severely alter the neural representation of temporal information along the tonotopic axis of the cochlea. Notably, auditory-nerve fibers innervating the high-frequency part of the cochlea grow increasingly responsive to low-frequency TFS information and less responsive to temporal information near their characteristic frequency (CF). Cochlear damage also increases the correlation of the response to TFS across fibers of varying CF, decreases the traveling-wave delay between TFS responses of fibers with different CFs, and can increase the range of temporal modulation frequencies encoded in the periphery for broadband sounds. Weaker neural coding of temporal structure in background noise and degraded coding of broadband signals along the tonotopic axis of the cochlea are expected to contribute considerably to speech perception problems in people with sensorineural hearing loss. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled "Annual Reviews 2013".
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Affiliation(s)
- Kenneth S Henry
- Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, Purdue University, 500 Oval Drive, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA
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Lorenzi C, Wallaert N, Gnansia D, Leger AC, Ives DT, Chays A, Garnier S, Cazals Y. Temporal-envelope reconstruction for hearing-impaired listeners. J Assoc Res Otolaryngol 2012; 13:853-65. [PMID: 23007719 PMCID: PMC3505588 DOI: 10.1007/s10162-012-0350-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/18/2011] [Accepted: 09/09/2012] [Indexed: 10/27/2022] Open
Abstract
Recent studies suggest that normal-hearing listeners maintain robust speech intelligibility despite severe degradations of amplitude-modulation (AM) cues, by using temporal-envelope information recovered from broadband frequency-modulation (FM) speech cues at the output of cochlear filters. This study aimed to assess whether cochlear damage affects this capacity to reconstruct temporal-envelope information from FM. This was achieved by measuring the ability of 40 normal-hearing listeners and 41 listeners with mild-to-moderate hearing loss to identify syllables processed to degrade AM cues while leaving FM cues intact within three broad frequency bands spanning the range 65-3,645 Hz. Stimuli were presented at 65 dB SPL for both normal-hearing listeners and hearing-impaired listeners. They were presented as such or amplified using a modified half-gain rule for hearing-impaired listeners. Hearing-impaired listeners showed significantly poorer identification scores than normal-hearing listeners at both presentation levels. However, the deficit shown by hearing-impaired listeners for amplified stimuli was relatively modest. Overall, hearing-impaired data and the results of a simulation study were consistent with a poorer-than-normal ability to reconstruct temporal-envelope information resulting from a broadening of cochlear filters by a factor ranging from 2 to 4. These results suggest that mild-to-moderate cochlear hearing loss has only a modest detrimental effect on peripheral, temporal-envelope reconstruction mechanisms.
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Affiliation(s)
- Christian Lorenzi
- Equipe Audition (CNRS, Universite Paris Descartes, Ecole normale superieure), Institut d'Etude de la Cognition, Ecole normale superieure, Paris Sciences et Lettres, 29 rue d'Ulm, 75005 Paris, France.
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Kale S, Heinz MG. Temporal modulation transfer functions measured from auditory-nerve responses following sensorineural hearing loss. Hear Res 2012; 286:64-75. [PMID: 22366500 DOI: 10.1016/j.heares.2012.02.004] [Citation(s) in RCA: 20] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/02/2011] [Revised: 01/27/2012] [Accepted: 02/05/2012] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
The ability of auditory-nerve (AN) fibers to encode modulation frequencies, as characterized by temporal modulation transfer functions (TMTFs), generally shows a low-pass shape with a cut-off frequency that increases with fiber characteristic frequency (CF). Because AN-fiber bandwidth increases with CF, this result has been interpreted to suggest that peripheral filtering has a significant effect on limiting the encoding of higher modulation frequencies. Sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL), which is typically associated with broadened tuning, is thus predicted to increase the range of modulation frequencies encoded; however, perceptual studies have generally not supported this prediction. The present study sought to determine whether the range of modulation frequencies encoded by AN fibers is affected by SNHL, and whether the effects of SNHL on envelope coding are similar at all modulation frequencies within the TMTF passband. Modulation response gain for sinusoidally amplitude modulated (SAM) tones was measured as a function of modulation frequency, with the carrier frequency placed at fiber CF. TMTFs were compared between normal-hearing chinchillas and chinchillas with a noise-induced hearing loss for which AN fibers had significantly broadened tuning. Synchrony and phase responses for individual SAM tone components were quantified to explore a variety of factors that can influence modulation coding. Modulation gain was found to be higher than normal in noise-exposed fibers across the entire range of modulation frequencies encoded by AN fibers. The range of modulation frequencies encoded by noise-exposed AN fibers was not affected by SNHL, as quantified by TMTF 3- and 10-dB cut-off frequencies. These results suggest that physiological factors other than peripheral filtering may have a significant role in determining the range of modulation frequencies encoded in AN fibers. Furthermore, these neural data may help to explain the lack of a consistent association between perceptual measures of temporal resolution and degraded frequency selectivity.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sushrut Kale
- Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA.
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Léger AC, Moore BCJ, Lorenzi C. Temporal and spectral masking release in low- and mid-frequency regions for normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners. THE JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA 2012; 131:1502-14. [PMID: 22352520 DOI: 10.1121/1.3665993] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/25/2023]
Abstract
"Masking release" (MR), the improvement of speech intelligibility in modulated compared with unmodulated maskers, is typically smaller than normal for hearing-impaired listeners. The extent to which this is due to reduced audibility or to suprathreshold processing deficits is unclear. Here, the effects of audibility were controlled by using stimuli restricted to the low- (≤1.5 kHz) or mid-frequency (1-3 kHz) region for normal-hearing listeners and hearing-impaired listeners with near-normal hearing in the tested region. Previous work suggests that the latter may have suprathreshold deficits. Both spectral and temporal MR were measured. Consonant identification was measured in quiet and in the presence of unmodulated, amplitude-modulated, and spectrally modulated noise at three signal-to-noise ratios (the same ratios for the two groups). For both frequency regions, consonant identification was poorer for the hearing-impaired than for the normal-hearing listeners in all conditions. The results suggest the presence of suprathreshold deficits for the hearing-impaired listeners, despite near-normal audiometric thresholds over the tested frequency regions. However, spectral MR and temporal MR were similar for the two groups. Thus, the suprathreshold deficits for the hearing-impaired group did not lead to reduced MR.
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Affiliation(s)
- Agnès C Léger
- Equipe Audition, Département d'Etudes Cognitives, École normale supérieure, 29 rue d'Ulm, 75005 Paris, France.
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Ardoint M, Sheft S, Fleuriot P, Garnier S, Lorenzi C. Perception of temporal fine-structure cues in speech with minimal envelope cues for listeners with mild-to-moderate hearing loss. Int J Audiol 2011; 49:823-31. [PMID: 20666687 DOI: 10.3109/14992027.2010.492402] [Citation(s) in RCA: 24] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/13/2022]
Abstract
The contribution of temporal fine-structure (TFS) cues to consonant identification was compared for seven young adults with normal hearing and five young adults with mild-to-moderate hearing loss and flat, high- or low-frequency gently sloping audiograms. Nonsense syllables were degraded using two schemes (PM: phase modulation; FM: frequency modulation) designed to remove temporal envelope (E) cues while preserving TFS cues in 16 0.35-octave-wide frequency bands spanning the range of 80 to 8020 Hz. For both schemes, hearing-impaired listeners performed significantly above chance level (PM: 36%; FM: 31%; chance level: 6.25%), but more poorly than normal-hearing listeners (PM: 80%; FM: 65%). Three hearing-impaired listeners showed normal or near-normal reception of nasality information. These results indicate that for mild to moderate levels of hearing loss, cochlear damage reduces but does not abolish the ability to use the TFS cues of speech. The deficits observed for both schemes in hearing-impaired listeners suggest involvement of factors other than only poor reconstruction of temporal envelope from temporal fine structure.
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Affiliation(s)
- Marine Ardoint
- Laboratoire de Psychologie de la Perception, CNRS, Universite Paris Descartes, Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris, France.
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46
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Envelope coding in auditory nerve fibers following noise-induced hearing loss. J Assoc Res Otolaryngol 2010; 11:657-73. [PMID: 20556628 DOI: 10.1007/s10162-010-0223-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 97] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/12/2010] [Accepted: 05/25/2010] [Indexed: 10/19/2022] Open
Abstract
Recent perceptual studies suggest that listeners with sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) have a reduced ability to use temporal fine-structure cues, whereas the effects of SNHL on temporal envelope cues are generally thought to be minimal. Several perceptual studies suggest that envelope coding may actually be enhanced following SNHL and that this effect may actually degrade listening in modulated maskers (e.g., competing talkers). The present study examined physiological effects of SNHL on envelope coding in auditory nerve (AN) fibers in relation to fine-structure coding. Responses were compared between anesthetized chinchillas with normal hearing and those with a mild-moderate noise-induced hearing loss. Temporal envelope coding of narrowband-modulated stimuli (sinusoidally amplitude-modulated tones and single-formant stimuli) was quantified with several neural metrics. The relative strength of envelope and fine-structure coding was compared using shuffled correlogram analyses. On average, the strength of envelope coding was enhanced in noise-exposed AN fibers. A high degree of enhanced envelope coding was observed in AN fibers with high thresholds and very steep rate-level functions, which were likely associated with severe outer and inner hair cell damage. Degradation in fine-structure coding was observed in that the transition between AN fibers coding primarily fine structure or envelope occurred at lower characteristic frequencies following SNHL. This relative fine-structure degradation occurred despite no degradation in the fundamental ability of AN fibers to encode fine structure and did not depend on reduced frequency selectivity. Overall, these data suggest the need to consider the relative effects of SNHL on envelope and fine-structure coding in evaluating perceptual deficits in temporal processing of complex stimuli.
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Uchanski RM, Moore BCJ, Glasberg BR. Effect of modulation maskers on the detection of second-order amplitude modulation with and without notched noise. THE JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA 2006; 119:2937-46. [PMID: 16708951 DOI: 10.1121/1.2188375] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/09/2023]
Abstract
The mechanisms underlying the detection of second-order amplitude modulation (AM) were explored. The detectability of second-order AM (fixed depth for each subject) was measured for first- and second-order modulation rates of 16 and 2 Hz, respectively (slow-rate pair), and 50 and 10 Hz, respectively (fast-rate pair), with no masker, a low-band modulation masker (centered at 2 or 10 Hz), and a high-band modulation masker (centered at 16 or 50 Hz). This was done in the absence and presence of an audio-frequency notched noise centered at the carrier frequency of 4000 Hz. Both modulation maskers were "low-noise" noises, to prevent overmodulation. In the absence of notched noise, both modulation maskers impaired performance for the slow-rate pair, but only the low-band masker impaired performance for the fast-rate pair. When notched noise was present, the low-band masker had no significant effect for either rate pair and the high-band masker had an effect only for the slow-rate pair. These results suggest that second-order AM detection is mediated both by an envelope distortion component at the second-order rate and by slow fluctuations in the output of a modulation filter tuned to the first-order rate. When notched noise is present, the distortion component plays little role.
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Affiliation(s)
- Rosalie M Uchanski
- Department of Otolaryngology, Washington University School of Medicine, 660 South Euclid Avenue, St. Louis, Missouri 63110, USA.
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Sek A, Moore BCJ. Perception of amplitude modulation by hearing-impaired listeners: the audibility of component modulation and detection of phase change in three-component modulators. THE JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA 2006; 119:507-14. [PMID: 16454304 DOI: 10.1121/1.2139631] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/06/2023]
Abstract
Two experiments were conducted to assess whether hearing-impaired listeners have a reduced ability to process suprathreshold complex patterns of modulation applied to a 4-kHz sinusoidal carrier. Experiment 1 examined the ability to "hear out" the modulation frequency of the central component of a three-component modulator, using the method described by Sek and Moore [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 113, 2801-2811 (2003)]. Scores were around 70-80% correct when the components in the three-component modulator were widely spaced and when the frequencies of the target and comparison different sufficiently, but decreased when the components in the modulator were closely spaced. Experiment 2 examined the ability to hear a change in the relative phase of the components in a three-component modulator with harmonically spaced components. The frequency of the central component, f, was either 50 or 100 Hz. Scores were about 70% correct when the component spacing was < or = 0.5fc, but decreased markedly for greater spacings. Performance was only slightly impaired by randomizing the overall modulation depth from one stimulus to the next. For both experiments, performance was only slightly worse than for normally hearing listeners, indicating that cochlear hearing loss does not markedly affect the ability to process suprathreshold complex patterns of modulation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Aleksander Sek
- Institute of Acoustics, Adam Mickiewicz University, 85 Umultowska, 61-614 Poznan, Poland.
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Füllgrabe C, Moore BCJ, Demany L, Ewert SD, Sheft S, Lorenzi C. Modulation masking produced by second-order modulators. THE JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA 2005; 117:2158-68. [PMID: 15898657 PMCID: PMC2708918 DOI: 10.1121/1.1861892] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/02/2023]
Abstract
Recent studies suggest that an auditory nonlinearity converts second-order sinusoidal amplitude modulation (SAM) (i.e., modulation of SAM depth) into a first-order SAM component, which contributes to the perception of second-order SAM. However, conversion may also occur in other ways such as cochlear filtering. The present experiments explored the source of the first-order SAM component by investigating the ability to detect a 5-Hz, first-order SAM probe in the presence of a second-order SAM masker beating at the probe frequency. Detection performance was measured as a function of masker-carrier modulation frequency, phase relationship between the probe and masker modulator, and probe modulation depth. In experiment 1, the carrier was a 5-kHz sinusoid presented either alone or within a notched-noise masker in order to restrict off-frequency listening. In experiment 2, the carrier was a white noise. The data obtained in both carrier conditions are consistent with the existence of a modulation distortion component. However, the phase yielding poorest detection performance varied across experimental conditions between 0 degrees and 180 degrees, confirming that, in addition to nonlinear mechanisms, cochlear filtering and off-frequency listening play a role in second-order SAM perception. The estimated magnitude of the modulation distortion component ranges from 5%-12%.
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Affiliation(s)
- Christian Füllgrabe
- Laboratoire de Psychologie Expérimentale--UMR CNRS 8581, Université René Descartes--Paris 5, 71 avenue Edouard Vaillant, 92774 Boulogne-Billancourt, France.
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Lorenzi C, Sibellas J, Füllgrabe C, Gallégo S, Fugain C, Meyer B. Effects of amplitude compression on first- and second-order modulation detection thresholds in cochlear implant listeners. Int J Audiol 2004; 43:264-70. [PMID: 15357409 DOI: 10.1080/14992020400050035] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/25/2022]
Abstract
The aim of this study was to examine the effects of instantaneous non-linear amplitude mapping on the detection of single-component and multicomponent temporal envelopes. To address this issue, first- and second-order amplitude modulation detection thresholds were measured in four cochlear implant users with the intervention of the compression device of the implant processor. The compression device is set to produce either a strongly or a weakly logarithmic mapping of stimulus amplitude to electrical amplitude. 'First-order' modulation detection thresholds indicate the ability of listeners to detect sinusoidal amplitude modulation (SAM) applied to a white noise carrier; they are measured as a function of the rate of that modulation, fm. 'Second-order' modulation detection thresholds indicate the ability to detect sinusoidal modulation applied to the depth of a sinusoidally amplitude-modulated signal (here, a 16-Hz sinusoidally amplitude-modulated white noise); they are measured as a function of the rate of the modulation applied to the modulation depth (referred to as fm'). In each task, stimuli are transformed by the implant processor and are presented through one electrode at approximately the same level. The results show that, in cochlear implant listeners, both first- and second-order modulation detection thresholds measured at the lower rates (< or =7 Hz) decrease slightly by about 3-6dB when the stronger compression is used. No effect of compression is observed at higher rates. These results suggest that instantaneous logarithmic amplitude mapping has beneficial- but limited-effects on the detection of single-component and multicomponent temporal envelopes. These results are discussed in light of current models of temporal envelope processing.
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Affiliation(s)
- Christian Lorenzi
- Equipe Perception Auditive, Laboratoire de Psychologie Expérimentale, UMR CNRS 8581, UFR Institut de Psychologie, Université René Descartes Paris 5, Boulogne-Billancourt, France.
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