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

项目摘要 大约3750万美国人听力有问题，其中一位首席 听力障碍者的抱怨很难在背景噪声中进行交流。在……里面 此外，许多年长的人在背景噪音中理解语音有困难 超过了仅仅基于他们的听力阈值而预期的水平。有一个 改善噪声中语音理解的诊断和治疗的基本需求 困难。这项研究计划旨在建立电生理相关的 噪声中的语音理解，目的是补充噪声中的语音测试。这个 假设噪声中的准确感知在一定程度上取决于神经的准确性。 对听觉刺激进行编码。通过结合电生理和行为信息 我们可以加深对噪声中感知困难的理解，并预测结果 难以使用生理测试进行测试的个体。 提出的这项研究的临床意义直接与患者的 更准确地预测、更准确地诊断和更准确地治疗噪声中的感知困难。一个 预测语音感知的电生理测量将允许改进 评估难以测试的人群，并提供有关这方面的能力的信息 对某些刺激进行编码的听觉系统。这将允许临床医生量身定做治疗 针对个人的特定需求和更有效地指导患者的策略 他们应该有的期望和他们应该预期的结果的好处的条款 具体的治疗方法。因此，为了加深我们对噪声中信号感知的理解和 神经编码，我们将使用脑干、皮质和认知听觉诱发电位和 噪声中的行为语音理解测量，以年龄和听力障碍为标准 连续变量来表征各种协变量的影响大小，并改善我们的 理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.