Cortical Potentials and Speech Perception in Children with Auditory Neuropathy

描述（由申请人提供）：由于听力神经病变谱系障碍的多样性和目前缺乏可靠的指标来指导这一人群的管理，听力神经病变谱系障碍儿童对早期干预和康复提出了挑战。这些挑战可能导致选择和实施适当干预措施（如助听器和/或人工耳蜗植入）的严重延误。本项目重点研究皮层听觉诱发电位作为一类客观电生理测量，在预测干预结果方面具有很大的前景。本研究旨在通过两个具体目标来评估这些潜能与言语感知之间的关系。目的1侧重于使用助听器的儿童亚组，并评估声诱发皮质电位在预测这些设备成功使用方面的效用。目的2关注使用人工耳蜗的儿童亚群，评估脑皮层电诱发电位与言语感知的关系。每个孩子的皮层电位（P1-N1-P2复合体和变化复合体）将根据他们的设备记录对声学或电刺激的反应。此外，辅助语音感知性能将使用年龄和发展相适应的测试来测量。然后将评估电生理测量与语音感知表现之间的相关性。这些实验的目的是确定在指导干预策略方面最有信息的电生理反应特征。因此，这个项目具有巨大的转化意义，因为它的发现可能直接影响临床实践。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Children with Auditory Neuropathy Spectrum Disorder present a challenge for early intervention and habilitation because of the diversity of the disorder and the current lack of robust indicators to guide in management of this population. These challenges can result in significant delays in selecting and implementing appropriate interventions such as hearing aids and/or cochlear implants. This project focuses on cortical auditory evoked potentials as a class of objective electrophysiological measures that hold great promise in the prediction of intervention outcomes. The proposed work evaluates the association between these potentials and speech perception in children with this disorder by pursuing two specific aims. Aim 1 focuses on the sub- group of children who use hearing aids and evaluates the utility of acoustically-evoked cortical potentials for predicting success with these devices. Aim 2 focuses on the sub-group of children who use cochlear implants and evaluates the relationship between electrically-evoked cortical potentials and speech perception. Cortical potentials (P1-N1-P2 complex and the change complex) will be recorded from each child in response to either acoustical or electrical stimulation, as appropriate for their device. In addition, aided speech perception performance will be measured using age- and developmentally-appropriate tests. Correlations between the electrophysiological measures and speech perception performance will then be assessed. The goal of these experiments is to identify electrophysiological response features that are most informative in terms of guiding intervention strategy. As such, this project has tremendous translational significance because its findings are likely to directly impact clinical practice.