Linking SNR to hearing aid success

描述：听力损失及其后果，是影响全人类的一个重要问题。任何人都不能幸免于衰老的过程或它对耳朵-大脑系统的最终影响。这一点值得注意，因为65岁及以上人口比例的增长速度快于总人口。预计到2030年，20%的人口将达到65岁或以上，35%至50%的人可能会报告患有老年性耳聋，这是一种主要通过使用助听器(HA)治疗的感觉障碍。然而，一个主要的问题是，在听力损失的人中使用HA的情况并不普遍(约25%)，而且只有一半的用户报告对他们在噪音中的辅助表现感到满意。尽管认真努力验证助听器(HA)在临床上是否合适，但几乎没有证据支持当前的做法能带来成功的结果。我们的假设是，HA的成功使用在一定程度上取决于HA向人的听觉系统传递的信噪比，以及人自身在噪声中对语音进行神经编码的能力。我们的总体项目目标是确定有助于HA成功的以患者和设备为中心的变量，以便开发相关的结果衡量标准并在临床环境中应用。预测真实世界HA成功的两个预期指标是个体在噪声中的语音阈值(SNR-50)以及HA输出的SNR。

DESCRIPTION: Hearing loss, and the resulting consequences of it, is an important problem that affects all humans. No person is exempt from the process of aging or the eventual impact it has on the ear-brain system. This point is noteworthy because the portion of the population aged 65 years and older is increasing at a faster rate than the total population. Twenty percent of the population is predicted to be 65 years or older by 2030 and between 35% and 50% will likely report having presbycusis, a sensory impairment that is treated primarily through the use of hearing aids (HA). A major problem, however, is that HA use among people with hearing loss is not prevalent (approximately 25%) and only half of those users report being satisfied with their aided performance in noise. Despite careful efforts to verify that hearing aids (HA) are fitted appropriately in the clinic, there is little evidence to support that current practices result in successful outcomes. Our hypothesis is that successful HA use depends, in part, on the signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio being delivered to a person's auditory system by their HA as well as a person's own ability to neurally encode speech in noise. Our overall project goal is to identify patient- and device-centered variables that contribute to HA success so that related outcome measures can be developed and applied in clinical settings. Two expected predictors of real-world HA success are the individual's threshold for speech in noise (SNR-50) as well as the SNR at the output of the HA.