Masking release in hearing loss: cochlear compression and effective audibility

听力损失中的掩蔽释放：耳蜗压缩和有效听觉

• 批准号: 7462561
• 负责人: Peggy B Nelson
• 金额: $ 35.82万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2008-04-01 至 2013-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7462561
• 关键词: Access to Information; Accounting; Affect; Algorithms; Auditory; Basilar Membrane; Cochlear Hearing Loss; Companions; Condition; Daily; Devices; Elderly; Environment; Frequencies; Future; Hearing; Hearing Aids; Lead; Life; Masks; Measures; Methods; Modeling; Nature; Noise; Output; Pattern; Performance; Peripheral; Physiology; Play; Process; Psychoacoustics; Psychophysiology; Public Health; Range; Recovery; Reliance; Research; Residual state; Resolution; Role; Sensorineural Hearing Loss; Signal Transduction; Simulate; Source; Speech; Speech Intelligibility; System; Test Result; Testing; Time; base; computerized data processing; design; experience; hearing impairment; improved; indexing; models and simulation; remediation; research study; response; sound; speech recognition

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Listeners with sensorineural hearing loss experience significantly more masking and significantly less release from masking than do listeners with normal hearing sensitivity. When background noise is intermittent, normal- hearing (NH) listeners take advantage of the momentary dips in the noise to understand the target signal. This benefit is termed masking release (MR). Hearing-impaired (HI) listeners do not experience the same degree of MR as NH listeners. As a result, HI listeners cannot understand speech in noisy environments at the same signal-to-noise ratios in which NH listeners can understand successfully. At the same time, listeners with hearing loss frequently complain that their amplification devices are not satisfactory in background noise. We propose to further our understanding of the masking and MR experienced by listeners with hearing loss and to investigate the causes and potential sources of remediation. In Experiment 1 we will test MR in speech recognition experiments across a wide range of noise and signal levels and bandwidths. We will test NH and HI listeners, as well as NH listeners whose thresholds will be elevated by noise to match those of the HI listeners. We will measure listeners' sentence recognition in quiet, steady noise, and fluctuating noise and will define MR as the performance difference between steady and fluctuating noise. We hypothesize based on preliminary results that signal audibility will not fully explain the reduced MR of HI listeners, and that additional variability is explained by HI listeners' reduced access to spectrotemporal information about the speech in the dips of noise. We further hypothesize that underlying changes in cochlear physiology can explain HI listeners' difficulty in conditions of intermittent noise, and we propose to measure cochlear function in Experiment 2. We will measure basilar membrane input/output responses, masking period patterns, modulation masking, and frequency selectivity to describe HI listeners' cochlear function. We will use results from Experiment 2 to compute the adjusted effective audibility experienced by HI listeners taking into account the loss of cochlear gain experienced by HI listeners. In Section 3 we will model and simulate the effects of cochlear hearing loss based on speech recognition and psychoacoustic test results obtained from the same listeners. We hypothesize that these models and simulations will provide accurate and useful predictions of MR in young HI listeners. We will use the resulting models and simulations as empirically based first steps in evaluating signal processing for noise reduction. In later years the models can also be applied further to listeners with severe hearing loss, and to elderly listeners with hearing loss. Overall, the findings will contribute to our understanding of the nature of hearing loss, the effects of reduced audibility and cochlear gain, and the implications for understanding speech in a variety of noise backgrounds. We hypothesize that improving our understanding of the nature of reduced masking release will improve our ability to develop signal processing algorithms that can more effectively remediate HI listeners' difficulties in noise. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE Results from the proposed experiments and models will help understand hearing-impaired listeners' difficulty understanding speech in background noise. We anticipate that models developed in this project will lay the groundwork for evaluating signal-processing algorithms to maximize speech intelligibility in noise.

描述（由申请人提供）：与正常听力敏感度的听众相比，感音神经性听力损失的听众经历了明显更多的掩蔽和明显更少的掩蔽释放。当背景噪声是间歇性的，正常听力（NH）的听众利用噪声中的瞬时下降来理解目标信号。这种益处被称为掩蔽释放（MR）。听力受损（HI）的听众不会经历与NH听众相同程度的MR。因此，HI听众无法在与NH听众可以成功理解的相同信噪比下理解嘈杂环境中的语音。与此同时，听力损失的听众经常抱怨他们的放大设备在背景噪音中不令人满意。我们建议进一步了解听力损失听众所经历的掩蔽和MR，并调查原因和潜在的补救来源。在实验1中，我们将在语音识别实验中测试MR在各种噪声和信号水平和带宽下的表现。我们将测试NH和HI听众，以及NH听众，他们的阈值将被噪声提高，以匹配HI听众。我们将测量安静、稳定噪声和波动噪声中听者的句子识别，并将MR定义为稳定噪声和波动噪声之间的性能差异。我们假设的基础上初步的结果，信号可听度将不能完全解释减少MR的HI听众，和额外的可变性解释HI听众的减少访问spectrotemporal信息的语音在噪声的下降。我们进一步假设耳蜗生理学的潜在变化可以解释HI听众在间歇性噪声条件下的困难，我们建议在实验2中测量耳蜗功能。我们将测量基底膜输入/输出响应、掩蔽周期模式、调制掩蔽和频率选择性来描述HI听者的耳蜗功能。我们将使用实验2的结果来计算HI听众所经历的调整后的有效可听度，同时考虑到HI听众所经历的耳蜗增益的损失。在第3节中，我们将基于从相同的听众获得的语音识别和心理声学测试结果来建模和模拟耳蜗听力损失的影响。我们假设，这些模型和模拟将提供准确和有用的预测MR在年轻的HI听众。我们将使用由此产生的模型和模拟作为经验为基础的第一步，在评估信号处理降噪。在以后的几年里，模型也可以进一步应用于严重听力损失的听众，以及听力损失的老年听众。总的来说，这些发现将有助于我们理解听力损失的性质，降低可听度和耳蜗增益的影响，以及在各种噪声背景下理解语音的影响。我们假设，提高我们对掩蔽释放减少的性质的理解将提高我们开发信号处理算法的能力，这些算法可以更有效地补救HI听众在噪声中的困难。公共卫生相关性从拟议的实验和模型的结果将有助于理解听力受损的听众在背景噪声中理解语音的困难。我们预计，在这个项目中开发的模型将奠定基础，评估信号处理算法，以最大限度地提高语音清晰度在噪声中。