Spatial Hearing in Children with Normal Hearing and Bilateral Cochlear Implants

描述(申请人提供)：这项研究的总体目标是了解儿童如何在复杂的听觉环境中听力。空间听力、在背景噪声中理解语音的能力以及对回声干扰的抑制(优先效应；PE)将在听力正常的儿童和接受双侧人工耳蜗术(BI-CI)的聋儿中进行研究。目的1是研究复杂声学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退化。我们将测试这一假设，即空间听力技能在生命早期在简单的条件下发育良好，而不是在复杂、具有挑战性的条件下，例如当存在竞争信号、回声或噪声时。目的2研究听力正常儿童在多源环境下的言语清晰度。由于目标和干扰的空间分离而导致的掩蔽的减少(从掩蔽中的空间释放；SRM)将是本工作的重点。我们将测试关于中央调节的听觉能力在童年时期成熟的假设。目标1和目标2中的研究也将为理解双边利益对听力损失儿童的重要性，特别是对越来越多的接受双侧人工耳蜗术(BI-CI)的儿童提供重要基准。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的益处，这些儿童在第二个植入物激活之前和之后根据听觉经验而不同。假设同时患有BI-CI的儿童将比连续BI-CI的儿童更快地出现双边益处；在两年的双边经验后，差异将显著缩小；由于早期建立双耳回路，语言后耳聋儿童的表现将好于语言前耳聋儿童。拟议的工作将帮助我们更好地了解日常情况下重要功能的发展。这里开发的措施最终可以在扩增和匹配策略的临床评估中实施。BI-CI研究的结果将提供对儿童双边益处的量化测量，并将对听觉可塑性和经验在年轻人群中的作用具有启发性。

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.