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How early aging and environment interact in everyday listening: from brainstem to behavior through modeling
Barbara Shinn-Cunningham1, Dorea R Ruggles, Hari Bharadwaj
1Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University Center for Computational Neuroscience and Neural Technology, Boston, MA 02215, USA. shinn@bu.edu
Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology
|May 30, 2013
Summary
Middle-aged adults struggle more in noisy environments due to age-related changes in auditory processing. Their brainstem
Area of Science:
- Auditory Neuroscience
- Psychoacoustics
- Human Aging Research
Background:
- Selective spatial attention relies on precise auditory processing.
- Brainstem temporal coding fidelity influences attention in normal-hearing listeners.
- Aging may impact auditory processing and attention in reverberant conditions.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate age-related changes in auditory processing and selective attention.
- To examine the role of brainstem frequency-following response (FFR) components in attention.
- To understand how reverberation affects auditory attention in middle-aged adults.
Main Methods:
- Recruited middle-aged listeners and measured brainstem responses using frequency-following response (FFR).
- Analyzed FFR into orthogonal envelope and carrier components.
- Used a model to link auditory channels to FFR components and correlated with attention performance.
Main Results:
- Middle-aged listeners are more susceptible to reverberation than young adults.
- Mid- to high-frequency channels dominate envelope FFR; lower frequencies dominate carrier FFR.
- The predictive component of FFR for attention performance shifts with age.
Conclusions:
- Early aging degrades peripheral temporal coding in mid-to-high frequencies, impacting envelope interaural time difference (ITD) coding.
- Middle-aged adults with weaker envelope coding rely on less robust carrier ITDs in reverberation.
- This reliance on fragile cues hinders conversational speech understanding in noisy environments for older adults.
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