The effects of cochlear hearing loss on the perception of pitch and temporal fine structure

耳蜗听力损失对音调和颞部精细结构感知的影响

• 批准号: G0900591/1
• 负责人: Chris Plack
• 金额: $ 38.47万
• 依托单位: University of Manchester
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2010 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=G0900591%2F1
• 关键词: effects; cochlear; hearing; loss; perception

Hearing impairment is a major health issue, affecting roughly 1 in 6 people. The disability is a barrier to communication with friends and family, makes everyday human contact difficult and embarrassing, and impairs enjoyment of music. With an increasingly aged population, the problem is likely to get worse. However, current hearing aids are limited in their effectiveness. In particular, they do not provide much help in understanding speech in the noisy environments we often encounter in our everyday lives. Pitch is one of the primary auditory sensations. It underlies musical melody and some important speech information such as prosody (the stress pattern of an utterance). It is also important in helping us to separate out sounds that occur together, such as speech in a noisy background. Pitch is represented by nerve cells in the brain in part by the synchronized firing of electrical impulses. Recently it has been suggested that this ?temporal code? may be disrupted in people with hearing loss. This may have an adverse effect, not only on pitch perception, but also on the ability to hear out the sound of interest from background noise (for example, a single speaker at a noisy party). Since this latter deficit is the main problem experienced by hearing-impaired listeners, it is important that we understand these limitations. In addition, hearing-impaired people often experience abnormal shifts in pitch that may greatly impair the enjoyment of music. These shifts may also be related to the temporal deficit. Our research will investigate the causes and nature of these deficits. We will use behavioural tasks, in which human participants with normal and impaired hearing will make decisions regarding sounds presented to them over headphones. These tasks will measure perceptual limitations. We will also use a technique that involves recording the electrical activity of nerve cells in the brain as the participants listen to sounds, using electrodes attached to the head. This technique will measure the coding of pitch information in the brain, and will allow us to investigate the physiological basis of the deficits experienced by impaired listeners. It is hoped that the results will suggest new diagnostic techniques for determining the nature of the temporal coding impairment on an individual basis, and allow us to design more effective hearing aids that compensate for these deficits.

听力障碍是一个主要的健康问题，大约每6人中就有1人受到影响。残疾是与朋友和家人沟通的障碍，使日常人类接触变得困难和尴尬，并损害了音乐的享受。随着人口日益老龄化，这个问题可能会变得更糟。然而，目前的助听器在有效性方面是有限的。特别是，在我们日常生活中经常遇到的嘈杂环境中，它们对理解言语没有太大帮助。音调是一种主要的听觉感觉。它是音乐旋律和一些重要的语音信息的基础，如韵律(发声的重音模式)。它在帮助我们区分同时出现的声音方面也很重要，例如在嘈杂背景下的讲话。音调是由大脑中的神经细胞代表的，部分原因是电脉冲的同步发射。最近有人建议这个？时间代码？在听力受损的人身上可能会受到干扰。这可能会产生不利影响，不仅影响音调感知，还影响从背景噪声(例如，嘈杂聚会上的单个扬声器)中听出感兴趣的声音的能力。由于后一种缺陷是听力受损的听众所经历的主要问题，因此我们了解这些限制是很重要的。此外，听力受损的人经常会经历音调的异常变化，这可能会极大地影响音乐的享受。这些转变也可能与暂时的赤字有关。我们的研究将调查这些缺陷的原因和性质。我们将使用行为任务，在这一任务中，听力正常和受损的人类参与者将对通过耳机呈现给他们的声音做出决定。这些任务将衡量知觉的局限性。我们还将使用一种技术，使用连接到头部的电极记录参与者在听声音时大脑中神经细胞的电活动。这项技术将测量大脑中音调信息的编码，并将使我们能够调查受损听者所经历的缺陷的生理基础。希望这一结果将为我们提供新的诊断技术，以确定个体的时间编码障碍的性质，并使我们能够设计更有效的助听器来弥补这些缺陷。