Age Effects on Measures of Auditory Duration Discrimination

Fitzgibbons, Peter J.; Gordon‐Salant, Sandra

doi:10.1044/jshr.3703.662

Cited by 154 publications

(101 citation statements)

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“…The ability to discriminate between gaps of different duration was significantly better in the young rats in comparison with old rats: the mean Weber's ratios were 0.39 and 0.44 for young rats and 0.65 and 0.74 for old rats. Although there is a lack of animal studies focused of gap duration discrimination, our data correspond with the results of psychophysical studies in humans that show an age-related deficit in the ability to discriminate between gaps of different durations [11,12,15,16,50,51], e.g. Fitzgibbons and…”

Section: Accepted M Manuscriptsupporting

confidence: 76%

“…GDT is the smallest duration of a silent interval in a sound that a subject is able to detect; GDDL is defined as the smallest change in the duration of a silent interval that a subject may discriminate from the duration of another interval. A significant deficit in gap detection [4-6, 13, 14] as well as in gap discrimination [11,12,15,16] has been shown in older people.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Age-related changes in auditory temporal processing in the rat

Šuta

Rybalko

Pelánová

et al. 2011

Experimental Gerontology

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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPTABBREVIATIONS: dB SPL -dB sound pressure level, GDDL -gap duration difference limen, GDT-gap detection threshold, MLR -middle latency response ABSTRACT Presbycusis, as the deterioration of hearing ability occurring with aging, can be manifested not only in a shift of hearing thresholds, but also in a deterioration of the temporal processing of acoustical signals, which may in elderly people result in degraded speech comprehension.In this study we assessed the age-related changes in the temporal processing of acoustical signals in the auditory system of pigmented rats (Long Evans strain). The temporal resolution was investigated in young adult (3-4 months) and old (30-34 months) rats by behavioral and electrophysiological methods: the rats' ability to detect and discriminate gaps in a continuous noise was examined behaviorally, and the amplitude-rate function was assessed for the middle latency response (MLR) to clicks. A worsening of the temporal resolution with aging was observed in the results of all tests. The values of the gap detection threshold (GDT) and the gap duration difference limen (GDDL) in old rats increased about two-fold in comparison with young adult rats. The MLR to a click train in old rats exhibited a significantly faster reduction in amplitude with an increasing stimulation rate in comparison with young adult rats. None of the age-related changes in the parameters characterizing temporal resolution (GDT, GDDL and MLR to a click train) correlated with the degree of the age-related hearing loss. However, the age-related changes in MLR amplitude-rate function correlated with the age-related changes in GDDL, but not with the changes in GDT. The behavioral and electrophysiological data clearly show that aging in rats is accompanied with a pronounced deficit in the temporal processing of acoustical signals that is associated with the deteriorated function of the central auditory system.

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Section: Accepted M Manuscriptsupporting

confidence: 76%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Age-related changes in auditory temporal processing in the rat

Šuta

Rybalko

Pelánová

et al. 2011

Experimental Gerontology

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“…The consequences of presbycusis can be described as a function of central or peripheral aging, or as a function of peripheral hearing loss. Decline in the ability to discriminate speech, especially in complex acoustic environments, likely reflects impaired processing of acoustic information within the central auditory neuraxis (Dubno et al, 1984;Moore et al, 1992;Fitzgibbons and Gordon-Salant, 1994;Schneider et al, 1994;Snell, 1997;Strouse et al, 1998;Tremblay et al, 2002Tremblay et al, , 2003Ostroff et al, 2003). Functional and neurochemical studies in animal models suggest that sensory aging may begin as a slow peripheral deafferentation, which triggers a compensatory downregulation of central inhibitory amino acid neurotransmitter function (Caspary et al, 1990Schmolesky et al, 2000;Mendelson and Ricketts, 2001;Leventhal et al, 2003).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Age-Related Changes in the Inhibitory Response Properties of Dorsal Cochlear Nucleus Output Neurons: Role of Inhibitory Inputs

Caspary

Schatteman²,

Hughes³

2005

J. Neurosci.

158

114

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Age-related hearing loss frequently results in a loss in the ability to discriminate speech signals, especially in noise. This is attributable, in part, to a loss in temporal resolving power and ability to adjust dynamic range. Circuits in the adult dorsal cochlear nucleus (DCN) have been shown to preserve signal in background noise. Fusiform cells, major DCN output neurons, receive focused glycinergic inputs from tonotopically aligned vertical cells that also project to the ventral cochlear nucleus. Glycine-mediated inhibition onto fusiform cells results in decreased tone-evoked activity as intensity is increased at frequencies adjacent to characteristic frequency (CF). DCN output is thus shaped by glycinergic inhibition, which can be readily assessed in recordings from fusiform cells. Previous DCN studies suggest an age-related loss of markers for glycinergic neurotransmission. The present study postulated that response properties of aged fusiform cells would show a loss of inhibition, resembling conditions observed with glycine receptor blockade. The functional impact of aging was examined by comparing response properties from units meeting fusiform-cell criteria in young and aged rats. Fusiform cells in aged animals displayed significantly higher maximum discharge rates to CF tones than those recorded from young-adult animals. Fusiform cells of aged rats displayed significantly fewer nonmonotonic CF rate-level functions and an age-related change in temporal response properties. These findings are consistent with an age-related loss of glycinergic input, likely from vertical cells, and with findings from other sensory aging studies suggesting a selective age-related decrement in inhibitory amino acid neurotransmitter function.

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“…However, the HI listeners in this study were on average older than the NH listeners in the study by Wojtczak et al (2012) used as a control group. A large number of studies have reported clear effects of age on gap detection and gap-duration discrimination for both within-channel and across-channel markers (Fitzgibbons and Gordon-Salant 1994;Schneider et al 1994;He et al 1999;Lister et al 2000Lister et al , 2002Lister and Roberts 2005). Since the NH and HI listeners compared in this study were not age-matched, some of the observed differences between their data may reflect poorer coding of temporal information or a reduced ability to integrate temporal information across frequency due to the age of the HI listeners.…”

Section: Age Versus Hearing Lossmentioning

confidence: 73%

“…A number of studies have shown that temporal processing deteriorates with age even in the absence of hearing loss (e.g., Fitzgibbons and Gordon-Salant 1994;Strouse et al 1998;Fitzgibbons et al 2007). The effect of age has been generally attributed to changes in central neural processing, although some evidence suggests that the effect may have a peripheral component that is not associated with presbycusis.…”

Section: Fig 4 Correlation Between Thresholds For Detecting a 40-msmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perception of Across-Frequency Asynchrony by Listeners with Cochlear Hearing Loss

Wojtczak

Beim

Micheyl

et al. 2013

JARO

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Cochlear hearing loss is often associated with broader tuning of the cochlear filters. Cochlear response latencies are dependent on the filter bandwidths, so hearing loss may affect the relationship between latencies across different characteristic frequencies. This prediction was tested by investigating the perception of synchrony between two tones exciting different regions of the cochlea in listeners with hearing loss. Subjective judgments of synchrony were compared with thresholds for asynchrony discrimination in a three-alternative forced-choice task. In contrast to earlier data from normal-hearing (NH) listeners, the synchronous-response functions obtained from the hearing-impaired (HI) listeners differed in patterns of symmetry and often had a very low peak (i.e., maximum proportion of "synchronous" responses). Also in contrast to data from NH listeners, the quantitative and qualitative correspondence between the data from the subjective and the forced-choice tasks was often poor. The results do not provide strong evidence for the influence of changes in cochlear mechanics on the perception of synchrony in HI listeners, and it remains possible that age, independent of hearing loss, plays an important role in temporal synchrony and asynchrony perception.

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Age Effects on Measures of Auditory Duration Discrimination

Cited by 154 publications

References 25 publications

Age-related changes in auditory temporal processing in the rat

Age-related changes in auditory temporal processing in the rat

Age-Related Changes in the Inhibitory Response Properties of Dorsal Cochlear Nucleus Output Neurons: Role of Inhibitory Inputs

Perception of Across-Frequency Asynchrony by Listeners with Cochlear Hearing Loss

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