The Brain-Behavior Relationship: Age, Hearing, and Their Effects on Understanding Speech in Noise

项目摘要 大约有3750万美国人有听力问题，其中一个主要问题是听力问题。 听力受损者的投诉是在背景噪音中难以沟通。在 此外，许多老年人在背景噪声中理解语音有困难 超出了仅仅基于他们的听力阈值的预期。有一个 改善噪声中言语理解诊断和治疗的基本需要 困难这项研究计划旨在建立电生理学相关的 噪声中的语音理解，目的是补充噪声中的语音测试。的 假设在噪声中的准确感知部分取决于神经网络的准确性。 听觉刺激的编码。通过结合电生理和行为信息 我们可以推进我们对噪声中感知困难的理解， 使用生理测试难以测试的个体。 这项研究的临床意义与以下能力直接相关： 预测，更准确地诊断，更精确地治疗噪音中的感知困难。一个 预测言语感知的电生理测量将允许改善 评估难以测试的人群，并提供有关能力的信息， 听觉系统对某些刺激进行编码。这将允许临床医生定制治疗 战略的具体需要的个人和咨询病人更有效地在 他们应该拥有的期望以及他们应该期望的利益， 具体治疗。因此，为了进一步理解信噪比感知， 神经编码，我们将使用脑干，皮层和认知听觉诱发电位， 噪声环境下的行为言语理解能力， 连续变量来表征各种协变量的效应量，并改善我们的 了解大脑和行为测量之间的关系。

Project Summary Approximately 37.5 million Americans have some problem hearing, and one of the chief complaints of those with hearing impairment is difficulty communicating in background noise. In addition, many older individuals have difficulties understanding speech in background noise beyond what would be expected based solely on their audiometric thresholds. There is a fundamental need for improved diagnosis and treatment of speech understanding in noise difficulties. This research program sets out to establish electrophysiological correlates of speech-in-noise understanding with the goal of supplementing speech-in-noise testing. The assumption is that accurate perception in noise is dependent, in part, on the accuracy of neural coding of the auditory stimulus. By combining electrophysiological and behavioral information we can advance our understanding of perception-in-noise difficulties and predict outcomes in difficult-to-test individuals using physiological testing. The clinical significance of the research proposed is related directly to the ability to predict, more accurately diagnose, and more precisely treat perception-in-noise difficulties. An electrophysiological measure that predicts speech perception will allow for improved assessment of difficult-to-test populations and provide information about the capacity of that auditory system to encode certain stimuli. This will allow the clinician to tailor treatment strategies to the specific needs of the individual and to counsel patients more effectively in terms of the expectations they should have and the benefit they should expect as a result of specific treatments. Therefore, to further our understanding of signal-in-noise perception and neural coding, we will use brainstem, cortical, and cognitive auditory evoked potentials and behavioral speech understanding-in-noise measures with age and hearing impairment as continuous variables to characterize the effect sizes of various covariates and to improve our understanding of the relationship between brain and behavioral measures.