Rapid measures of speech-evoked brainstem activity in infants who have hearing loss: assessing hearing aid benefit for speech sounds

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Thanks to the development of the newborn hearing screening methods, programs are being developed across Canada toidentify permanent childhood hearing loss in infancy and provide early intervention. Successful intervention, often includingthe use of hearing aids, has the potential to support normal development of speech and language. Unfortunately, objectivemethods to assess hearing aid benefit are appropriate are lacking, particularly those that are feasible in the critical earlymonths of infant hearing aid use. We have recently developed a novel system for assessment of brain responses to speech,with specific analysis of responses to 8 important cues in speech. We believe that this novel system could be modified foruse with infants. Our plan includes consultation with expert clinicians alongside collaborative system development andvalidation studies. A prototype system will be built in collaboration with a well-established industrial partner. This systemwould provide a new tool for analysis of which hearing-aid-processed speech sounds are being received by the infant'sauditory brain. This could flag significant barriers to successful intervention, and guide clinical decision making. This willenhance clinician decision-making and parent confidence in the quality of the hearing aid fitting. It is our hope that thistechnology will provide sensitive and detailed objective assessment of hearing aid benefit for infants, which will enable earlyintervention programs to take corrective action early, maintaining the goal of providing access to audible speech during thecritical period of language development. In turn, this will avoid the types of delays in spoken language acquisition known tobe associated with delayed, unused, or inappropriately fitted hearing aids.