PERCEPTUAL DIFFICULTIES ASSOCIATED WITH HYPERACUSIS: ASSESSMENTS AND MODEL DEVELOPMENT

有些人觉得平均音量太大，甚至大得让人难受。这种情况被称为听觉亢进，影响了至少15%的人口。患有听觉亢进的人经常发现在某些情况下很难跟上说话，特别是在有背景噪音的情况下。这可能会影响一个人的生活质量，比如他们可能会经常避免某些社交场合。听觉亢进可能是由于听觉系统的某种程度的损伤而引起的。内耳处理声音的方式可能会受到损害。从耳朵到大脑或从大脑到耳朵传递信息的神经结构和神经通路也可能受到损害。由于部分或全部这些听觉结构或神经通路受到不同程度的损伤，患有听觉亢进的人可能会报告不同程度的听力问题。该项目将对声音和言语感知进行心理测试，并记录大脑的神经活动（使用传感器），以了解哪些听觉结构和神经通路与正常的声音感知有关。我们将使用这些测试来测量没有听觉亢进的人以及有听觉亢进不同时间的人的声音和语言感知能力。然后，这些测试的数据将用于创建一个计算模型，该模型可以模拟听觉通路不同部分的听觉处理。该模型将通过模拟不同类型的听觉结构和神经通路的损伤如何相互作用来促进听觉亢进，从而提高我们对听觉亢进的理解。该模型还将用于模拟听觉亢进患者在嘈杂背景下听讲话时遇到的困难。

Some people find sound levels of average volume to be too loud or even painfully loud. This condition is called hyperacusis and affects at least 15% of the population. People with hyperacusis often find it difficult to follow speech in certain situations, especially when there is background noise. This can affect a person's quality of life, such that they may regularly avoid certain social situations. Hyperacusis may arise due to damage at some level of the auditory system. There may be damage to the way in which sounds are processed within the inner ear. There could also be damage to the nerve structures and nerve pathways that convey information from the ear to the brain, or from the brain to the ear. People with hyperacusis may report different problems with their hearing due to varying degree of damage to some, or all, of these auditory structures or nerve pathways. This project will use psychological tests of sound and speech perception and recordings of neural activity from the brain (using sensors) to obtain an understanding of which auditory structures and nerve pathways are involved in the normal perception of loudness. We shall use these tests to measure sound and speech perception in people that do not have hyperacusis and also people that have had hyperacusis for different lengths of time. The data from these tests will then be used to create a computational model that can simulate the auditory processing in different parts of the auditory pathway. The model will be used to improve our understanding of hyperacusis by simulating how different types of damage to auditory structures and neural pathways can interact to contribute to hyperacusis. The model will also be used to simulate the difficulties people with hyperacusis have when listening to speech in noisy backgrounds.