Speech-In-Noise Perception in Alzheimer's Disease and Primary Progressive Aphasia

Understanding speech despite background noise is essential for everyday communication, but makes heavy neural processing demands. It is therefore potentially vulnerable to neurodegenerative diseases, particularly those led by communication deficits (primary progressive aphasia). However, how speech-in-noise perception is affected in these diseases is poorly understood.

Here we addressed this in 59 patients representing typical Alzheimer's disease and canonical logopenic, nonfluent/agrammatic and semantic variant syndromes of primary progressive aphasia, compared with 24 cognitively-well, older controls. We administered a digit triplet test of speech-in-noise perception based on the task used in the UK Biobank study, alongside pure tone audiometry and a general neuropsychological assessment. Voxel-based morphometry of patients' brain MRI scans was used to identify structural neuroanatomical associations of speech-in-noise perception.

After adjusting for age, peripheral hearing and general cognitive function, the Alzheimer's, logopenic and nonfluent primary progressive aphasia groups performed significantly worse on speech-in-noise perception than controls. The nonfluent primary progressive aphasia and Alzheimer groups additionally had significantly worse peripheral hearing function than controls. Speech-in-noise perceptual performance correlated with grey matter atrophy in the right supramarginal gyrus.

Profiles of central (brain) and peripheral hearing impairment stratify major dementias, with implications for diagnosis and development of interventions to improve real-world communication in people living with dementia.