Spatial Hearing in Children with Normal Hearing and Bilateral Cochlear Implants

描述（由申请人提供）：本研究的总体目标是了解儿童在复杂的听觉环境中如何倾听。空间听力，在背景噪音中理解语言的能力和回声干扰的抑制（优先效应；PE）将在听力正常的儿童和接受双侧人工耳蜗（BI-CIs）的聋儿中进行研究。目的1是研究复杂声环境下空间听力的成熟发展，以及噪声和回声对这些能力的退化。我们将测试空间听力技能在生命早期在简单条件下发展良好的假设，而不是在复杂的、具有挑战性的条件下，比如当存在竞争信号、回声或噪音时。目的二是研究正常听力儿童在多源环境下的言语清晰度。由于目标和干扰的空间分离导致的掩蔽减少（空间释放掩蔽；SRM）将是本工作的重点。我们将检验关于儿童时期中央介导的听觉能力成熟的假设。目标1和目标2的研究也将为理解双侧获益对听力损失儿童的重要性，特别是对越来越多的双侧人工耳蜗植入儿童（BI-CIs）的重要性提供重要基准。在目标3中，使用目标1和目标2中的测量方法，将根据第二次植入物激活之前和之后的听觉经验，在儿童群体中研究bi - ci的益处。假设同时bi - ci的儿童比顺序bi - ci的儿童更容易出现双侧获益；经过两年的双边经验，这种差异将大大减少；由于双耳电路的早期建立，语后耳聋儿童比语前耳聋儿童表现更好。建议的工作将帮助我们更好地理解在日常情况下重要的功能的发展。这里发展的措施最终可以在放大和拟合策略的临床评估中实施。BI-CI研究的结果将提供儿童双边利益的定量测量，并将启发关于听觉可塑性和经验在年轻人群体中的作用。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The overall goal of this research is to understand how children hear in complex auditory environments. Spatial hearing, the ability to understanding speech in background noise and suppression of interference from echoes (precedence effect; PE) will be studied in children with normal hearing and in deaf children who received bilateral cochlear implants (BI-CIs). Aim 1 is to investigate the maturational progression of spatial hearing in complex acoustic environments, and the degradation that noise and echoes have on these abilities. We will test the hypothesis that spatial hearing skills are well developed early in life under simple conditions but not under complex, challenging conditions, such as when competing signals, echoes or noise are present. Aim 2 is to investigate Speech intelligibility in a multi-source environment in normal-hearing children. The decrease in masking due to spatial separation of the target and interferers (spatial release from masking; SRM) will be the focus of this work. We will test hypotheses regarding the maturation of centrally- mediated auditory abilities during childhood. Studies in Aims 1 and 2 will also provide important benchmarks for understanding the significance of bilateral benefits in children with hearing loss, and in particular for a growing population of children with bilateral cochlear implants (BI-CIs). In Aim 3, using measures from Aims 1 and 2, benefits of BI-CIs will be studied in groups of children that vary according to auditory experience prior to, and following, activation of their second implant. It is hypothesized that children with simultaneous BI-CIs will be on a quicker trajectory for emergence of bilateral benefits than children with sequential BI-CIs; that differences will be significantly diminished after 2 years of bilateral experience; that children with post- lingual deafness will perform better than those with pre-lingual deafness due to early establishment of binaural circuitry. The proposed work will help us to better understand the development of functions that are important in everyday situations. The measures developed here can be eventually implemented in clinical evaluations of amplification and fitting strategies. Findings from the BI-CI studies will provide quantitative measures of bilateral benefit in children and will be enlightening about the role of auditory plasticity and experience in a young human population.