Behavioral and Physiological Effects of Binaural Cue Distortion

双耳提示失真的行为和生理影响

• 批准号: 8926222
• 负责人: Andrew Dennis Brown
• 金额: $ 5.6万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO DENVER
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-09-01 至 2017-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8926222
• 关键词: Acoustic Nerve; Acoustics; Algorithms; Auditory; Auditory system; Awareness; Behavioral; Bilateral; Biological Preservation; Cell Nucleus; Chinchilla (genus); Clinical; Cochlear Implants; Communication; Cues; Data; Devices; Discrimination; Environment; Frequencies; Future; Goals; Head; Hearing; Hearing Aids; Human; Individual; Inferior Colliculus; Lead; Left; Location; Measurement; Measures; Mission; Modeling; National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders; Neurons; Outcome; Output; Patients; Pattern; Perception; Performance; Physiological; Process; Psychophysics; Relative (related person); Research; Series; Signal Transduction; Sound Localization; Source; Stimulus; System; Techniques; Technology; Time; Training; Work; auditory deprivation; base; binaural hearing; collaborative environment; design; digital; extracellular; follow-up; hearing impairment; improved; in vivo; insight; interest; meetings; neurophysiology; novel; public health relevance; relating to nervous system; research study; segregation; signal processing; sound; stimulus processing; touchscreen; virtual

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The ability to localize and segregate sound sources in space is important for communication and environmental awareness. Normal-hearing (NH) human listeners effectively localize and segregate sound sources on the basis of interaural time and level differences (ITD and ILD) - binaural acoustic cues to sound source azimuth. Hearing-impaired individuals who use hearing aids (HAs) and cochlear implants (CIs) are often significantly or profoundly impaired in their abilities to detect these cues, leading to significan communication difficulties in everyday listening environments. Such deficits are believed to arise from a combination of patient factors, such as prolonged auditory deprivation leading to altered central function, and clinical device limitations, such as inadequate temporal precision in signal processing or bilateral asymmetry in automatic gain control algorithms. An improved understanding of signal-related limitations on binaural hearing performance will lead to an enhanced basic understanding of the binaural system and may lead to consequent improvements in clinical device technology and patient outcomes. Therefore, the broad long-term goal of the proposed research is to elucidate the effects of binaural cue degradations on sound localization and segregation, toward improved understanding of normal and impaired binaural hearing. The specific aims of the proposed research are: (1) To characterize the effects of interaural decorrelation and time-varying ILD compression on normal-hearing psychophysical sensitivity to ILD, ITD and virtual sound source location and (2) to characterize the effects of such distortions on the encoding of ILD, ITD and virtual sound source azimuth by neurons of the inferior colliculus. Experiments will integrate (1) behavioral tasks including discrimination, intracranial lateralization, and virtual space localization for characterization of psychophysical sensitivity to control and binaurally degraded stimuli, including simulated "device-processed" stimuli generated from our recent measurements of actual bilateral HA outputs and (2) in vivo extracellular recording techniques for characterization of physiological (neural) sensitivity to control and degraded stimuli. Behavioral and neural data will be related using Fisher information to compare behavioral and neural binaural discrimination performance. Simultaneous with these experiments, the Applicant will regularly meet with clinicians (including the Co- Sponsor) and observe clinical sessions to gain additional perspective on communicative and other listening difficulties faced by people with hearing loss. Such meetings will enrich the Applicant's training and may provide insights for the design of follow-up of future experiments. The proposed work will support the mission of NIDCD by advancing basic understanding of the binaural auditory system and exogenous (signal-related) limitations on binaural benefit from bilateral clinical devices (especially HAs).

描述（由申请人提供）：定位和隔离空间声源的能力对于通信和环境意识非常重要。听力正常（NH）的人类听众有效地定位和分离声源的基础上，双耳时间和电平差（ITD和ILD）-双耳声学线索声源方位。使用助听器（HA）和人工耳蜗（CI）的听力受损个体在检测这些线索的能力方面通常显著或严重受损，导致在日常听力环境中的显著沟通困难。这种缺陷被认为是由患者因素的组合引起的，例如导致中枢功能改变的长时间听觉剥夺，以及临床设备限制，例如信号处理中的时间精度不足或自动增益控制算法中的双侧不对称。对双耳听力性能的信号相关限制的更好理解将增强对双耳系统的基本理解，并可能导致临床器械技术和患者结局的相应改善。因此，拟议的研究的广泛的长期目标是阐明双耳线索退化对声音定位和分离的影响，以提高对正常和受损双耳听力的理解。拟议研究的具体目的是：（1）表征耳间去相关和随时间变化的ILD压缩对正常听力的ILD，ITD和虚拟声源位置的心理物理敏感性的影响，以及（2）表征这种失真对下丘神经元编码ILD，ITD和虚拟声源方位角的影响。实验将整合（1）行为任务，包括辨别、颅内偏侧化和虚拟空间定位，以表征对控制和双耳退化刺激的心理物理敏感性，包括我们最近对实际双侧HA输出的测量所产生的模拟“设备处理”刺激和（2）用于表征生理（神经）对控制和退化刺激的敏感性。行为和神经数据将使用Fisher信息进行关联，以比较行为和神经双耳辨别性能。在进行这些实验的同时，申请人将定期与临床医生（包括共同申办者）会面并观察临床会议，以获得听力损失患者面临的沟通和其他听力困难的额外视角。此类会议将丰富申请人的培训，并可为未来实验的后续设计提供见解。拟议的工作将支持NIDCD的使命，通过推进对双耳听觉系统和双耳受益于双侧临床设备（特别是HA）的外源性（信号相关）限制的基本理解。