Brain function and dynamics during successful and unsuccessful understanding of speech in noise: Normal hearing listeners and listeners with sensorineural hearing loss

Overview

Sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) is a natural consequence of aging. Background noise is a primary complaint of listeners with SNHL. The intensity and complexity of everyday environmental noises, such as background conversations, fluctuate over time. It is thought that young NH listeners can cope with a background noise (a masker) that varies over time because they are good at “listening in the dips” of fluctuating noise backgrounds, i.e. whilst the target speech is momentarily unmasked by the noise. Older listeners with SNHL are not able to listen in the dips of background noise as well because of various perceptual and cognitive deficits associated with ageing.

This project will use neuroimaging to: 1) identify the neural correlates of listening in the dips of background maskers and 2) determine whether differences exist in the brain dynamics of young NH compared with older SNHL listeners when they are listening to speech in quiet and in noise. This approach, which will incorporate novel neurophysiological analyses, will be the first to identify the cortical markers of unsuccessful vs. successful understanding of speech in fluctuating noisy backgrounds.