Towards a better understanding of real-life hearing impairments via electrophysiology

The current gold-standard for the diagnosis of hearing loss is pure-tone audiometry (PTA). Yet, the artificial pure tones used to assess hearing thresholds in PTA do not resemble real-life listening situations. Therefore PTA only provides an incomplete picture of individual hearing impairment, as disorders such as supra-threshold hearing loss (i.e. hidden hearing loss) are not captured. Additionally, pure-tone audiometry is vastly dependent on subjective feedback. This can be problematic as giving informed feedback is challenging for some patient groups (e.g. infants that are born deaf or elderly people with dementia). Here we show that information, not captured via PTA, yet related to subjective hearing ability can be extracted from noninvasive magnetoencephalography (MEG) recordings while subjects were faced with a naturalistic listening situation (a radio play). We sketch a way on how we aim to capitalize on this information in the future to work towards diagnostic procedures that may allow clinicians to fit hearing aids optimally based on a characterization of individual hearing impairment without largely relying on PTA.Clinical Relevance- The present study offers a proof of concept showing that information related to hearing ability, that is not captured using pure-tone audiometry, can be decoded from magnetoencephalographic recordings while subjects listen to a radio play. We outline a perspective on how we aim to use this information in the future to aid in the process of fitting hearing devices.