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听觉环境中的听觉。将在听力正常的儿童和接受双侧人工耳蜗植入（BI-CI）的聋儿中研究空间听力、在背景噪声中理解语音的能力和回声干扰的抑制（优先效应; PE）。目的1是研究复杂声环境中空间听觉的成熟过程，以及噪声和回声对这些能力的影响。我们将测试这样一个假设，即空间听觉技能在简单条件下在生命早期就得到了很好的发展，但在复杂的、具有挑战性的条件下，如存在竞争性信号、回声或噪声时，则没有。目的二是研究听力正常儿童在多声源环境下的语音清晰度。由于目标和掩蔽物的空间分离（掩蔽的空间释放; SRM）导致掩蔽的减少将是这项工作的重点。我们将检验关于中枢介导的听觉能力在儿童时期成熟的假设.目标1和2中的研究还将为理解听力损失儿童双侧受益的重要性提供重要基准，特别是对于越来越多的双侧人工耳蜗植入（BI-CI）儿童。在目标3中，使用目标1和目标2中的措施，将在儿童组中研究BI-CI的受益，这些儿童组在激活第二个植入物之前和之后的听觉体验不同。据推测，同时发生BI-CI的儿童比顺序发生BI-CI的儿童更快地出现双侧获益;在2年的双侧经验后，差异将显著减少;由于双耳回路的早期建立，语后耳聋儿童的表现将优于语前耳聋儿童。拟议的工作将有助于我们更好地了解在日常情况下重要的功能的发展。在这里开发的措施，最终可以在临床评估的扩增和拟合策略。BI-CI研究的结果将提供儿童双边益处的定量测量，并将对年轻人群中听觉可塑性和经验的作用有所启发。

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.