How age affects memory task performance in clinically normal hearing persons

Journal of Neurophysiology

Francart

2019

157

When we grow older, understanding speech in noise becomes more challenging. Research has demonstrated the role of auditory temporal and cognitive deficits in these age-related speech-in-noise difficulties. To better understand the underlying neural mechanisms, we recruited young, middle-aged, and older normal-hearing adults and investigated the interplay between speech understanding, cognition, and neural tracking of the speech envelope using electroencephalography. The stimuli consisted of natural speech masked by speech-weighted noise or a competing talker and were presented at several subject-specific speech understanding levels. In addition to running speech, we recorded auditory steady-state responses at low modulation frequencies to assess the effect of age on nonspeech sounds. The results show that healthy aging resulted in a supralinear increase in the speech reception threshold, i.e., worse speech understanding, most pronounced for the competing talker. Similarly, advancing age was associated with a supralinear increase in envelope tracking, with a pronounced enhancement for older adults. Additionally, envelope tracking was found to increase with speech understanding, most apparent for older adults. Because we found that worse cognitive scores were associated with enhanced envelope tracking, our results support the hypothesis that enhanced envelope tracking in older adults is the result of a higher activation of brain regions for processing speech, compared with younger adults. From a cognitive perspective, this could reflect the inefficient use of cognitive resources, often observed in behavioral studies. Interestingly, the opposite effect of age was found for auditory steady-state responses, suggesting a complex interplay of different neural mechanisms with advancing age. NEW & NOTEWORTHY We measured neural tracking of the speech envelope across the adult lifespan and found a supralinear increase in envelope tracking with age. Using a more ecologically valid approach than auditory steady-state responses, we found that young and older, as well as middle-aged, normal-hearing adults showed an increase in envelope tracking with increasing speech understanding and that this association is stronger for older adults.

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Evidence for enhanced neural tracking of the speech envelope underlying age-related speech-in-noise difficulties

Journal of Neurophysiology

Francart

2019

157

“…With regard to the word reading test (één-minuut test; Brus & Voeten (1973)), all participants obtained a score higher than percentile 10, indicating no persistent reading and/or spelling difficulties. With regard to the cognitive tests, all participants passed the cognitive screening test (> 25/30 on Montreal Cognitive Assessment; Nasreddine et al, 2005) and achieved a score higher than 27/60 on the working memory test (Flemish computerized version of Reading Span Test, RST; Van Den Noort et al (2008); Vercammen et al (2017)). This study was approved by the Medical Ethics Committee UZ KU Leuven / Research (reference no.…”

Section: Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Top-down modulation of neural envelope tracking: the interplay with behavioral, self-report and neural measures of listening effort

Lesenfants

et al. 2019

Preprint

AbstractWhen listening to natural speech, our neural activity tracks the speech envelope. Moreover, recent research has demonstrated that this neural envelope tracking can be affected by top-down processes. The present study was designed to examine if neural envelope tracking is modulated by the effort that a person expends during listening. Five measures were included to quantify listening effort: two behavioral measures based on a novel dual-task paradigm, a self-report effort measure and two neural measures related to neural phase synchronization and alpha power. Electroencephalography responses to sentences, presented at a wide range of subject-specific signal-to-noise ratios, were recorded in thirteen young, normal-hearing adults. A comparison of the five measures revealed different effects of listening effort as a function of speech understanding. Reaction times on the primary task and self-reported effort decreased with increasing speech understanding. In contrast, reaction times on the secondary task and alpha power showed a peak-shaped behavior with highest effort at intermediate speech understanding levels. We found a positive association between envelope tracking and speech understanding. While a significant effect of listening effort was found on theta-band envelope tracking, the effect size was negligible. Therefore, our results suggest that listening effort is not a confound when using envelope tracking to objectively measure speech understanding in young, normal-hearing adults.

“…To investigate the interplay between hearing impairment, neural envelope tracking and cognition, our HI participants completed both a working memory and inhibition test since studies have suggested that these cognitive skills could underlie the speech-in-noise difficulties related to hearing impairment (Akeroyd, 2008;Petersen et al, 2017;Shinn-Cunningham and Best, 2008). The Flemish computerized version of the Reading Span Test (RST; Van Den Noort et al, 2008;Vercammen et al, 2017) assesses working memory by measuring a person's ability to remember sentence-final words of subsets of 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 sentences that they had to read out loud. The Stroop Test (Hammes, 1978) evaluates inhibition skills by comparing the results on a congruent task in which persons have to name the colors of rectangles, and a incongruent task in which the color of words, e.g.…”

Section: Cognitive Testsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hearing impairment is associated with enhanced neural tracking of the speech envelope

Francart

2018

Preprint

Elevated hearing thresholds in hearing impaired adults are usually compensated by providing amplification through a hearing aid. In spite of restoring hearing sensitivity, difficulties with understanding speech in noisy environments often remain. One main reason is that sensorineural hearing loss not only causes loss of audibility but also other deficits, including peripheral distortion but also central temporal processing deficits. To investigate the neural consequences of hearing impairment in the brain underlying speech-in-noise difficulties, we compared EEG responses to natural speech of 14 hearing impaired adults with those of 14 age-matched normal-hearing adults. We measured neural envelope tracking to sentences and a story masked by different levels of a stationary noise or competing talker. Despite their sensorineural hearing loss, hearing impaired adults showed higher neural envelope tracking of the target than the competing talker, similar to their normal-hearing peers. Furthermore, hearing impairment was related to an additional increase in neural envelope tracking of the target talker, suggesting that hearing impaired adults may have an enhanced sensitivity to envelope modulations or require a larger differential tracking of target versus competing talker to neurally segregate speech from noise. Lastly, both normal-hearing and hearing impaired participants showed an increase in neural envelope tracking with increasing speech understanding. Hence, our results open avenues towards new clinical applications, such as neuro-steered prostheses as well as objective and automatic measurements of speech understanding performance.HighlightsAdults with hearing impairment can neurally segregate speech from background noiseHearing loss is related to enhanced neural envelope tracking of the target talkerNeural envelope tracking has potential to objectively measure speech understanding