Sensorineural hearing loss impairs sensitivity but spares temporal integration for detection of frequency modulation

Abstract

The effect of the number of modulation cycles () on frequency-modulation (FM) detection thresholds (FMDTs) was measured with and without interfering amplitude modulation (AM) for hearing-impaired (HI) listeners, using a 500-Hz sinusoidal carrier and FM rates of 2 and 20 Hz. The data were compared with FMDTs for normal-hearing (NH) listeners and AM detection thresholds (AMDTs) for NH and HI listeners [Wallaert, Moore, and Lorenzi (2016). J. Acoust. Soc. , 3088-3096; Wallaert, Moore, Ewert, and Lorenzi (2017). J. Acoust. Soc., 971-980]. FMDTs were higher for HI than for NH listeners, but the effect of increasing was similar across groups. In contrast, AMDTs were lower and the effect of increasing was greater for HI listeners than for NH listeners. A model of temporal-envelope processing based on a modulation filter-bank and a template-matching decision strategy accounted better for the FMDTs at 20 Hz than at 2 Hz for young NH listeners and predicted greater temporal integration of FM than observed for all groups. These results suggest that different mechanisms underlie AM and FM detection at low rates and that hearing loss impairs FM-detection mechanisms, but preserves the memory and decision processes responsible for temporal integration of FM.

The roles of temporal envelope and fine structure information in auditory perception

“…For f c ¼ 6 kHz, the adverse effect of the AM was similar for all f m , consistent with the idea that, for very high f c , place information dominates for all f m . Similar effects of added AM have been obtained by other researchers [42,43].…”

Mechanisms of spectrotemporal modulation detection for normal- and hearing-impaired listeners

“…Speech sounds convey salient spectral and temporal modulations (Singh & Theunissen, 2003; Varnet et al, 2017). Historically, psychoacoustical studies of suprathreshold auditory mechanisms have investigated these two dimensions separately (Miller et al, 2018) using signals modulated in instantaneous amplitude (AM), frequency (FM), or spectral ripples (Houtgast, 1989; Bacon & Grantham, 1989; Moore & Sek, 1996; Wallaert et al, 2018; Eddins & Bero, 2007; Ozmera et al, 2018). Results from these studies using AM and FM signals have led to the development of functional auditory models such as the (temporal) modulation filter-bank (Dau et al, 1997), the current gold standard for simulating suprathreshold processing in the auditory system (Biberger & Ewert, 2016).…”

Impaired sensitivity to temporal fine structure but not the envelope for children with mild-to-moderate sensorineural hearing loss

“…Consequently, the impaired performance of the MM group on both the FD and F0 tasks in this study suggests that children with MMHL, like adults, may show reduced sensitivity to, or utility of, TFS cues (for reviews, see Henry and Heinz, 2013;Moore, 2008). There are several explanations as to why this might be the case, including (a) reduced precision of phase locking in individual auditory neurons (Woolf et al, 1981)), (b) reductions in auditory neural populations (Kujawa and Liberman, 2009), (c) disruptions to the peripheral (Ruggero, 1994) and central (Shamma, 1985;Carney et al, 2002) coding of TFS based on reduced correlation of outputs at adjacent points along the basilar membrane, (d) increases in the complexity and/or variability of neural TFS owing to broader auditory filters (Moore, 2008), (e) mismatches between neural TFS and the responses at characteristic-frequency locations on the basilar membrane (Henry et al, 2016), and/or (f) central changes including increases in internal noise (Wallaert et al, 2017, Wallaert et al, 2018 and/or decreases in neural inhibition (Takesian et al, 2012;Mowery et al, 2015), following SNHL (for review, see Moore, 2014). Nevertheless, animal models have shown that cochlear hearing loss has relatively little impact upon the phase-locking of peripheral auditory neurons to the TFS of narrowband stimuli in quiet (for review, see Henry and Heinz, 2013).…”

“…For example, adults with MMHL have been shown to perform more poorly on a range of tasks thought to measure TFS processing, including frequency discrimination (FD) of lowfrequency (< 4-5 kHz) tones, frequency modulation detection (FMD) for low carrier frequencies (< 4-5 kHz) and modulation rates (~ < 10 Hz), and the discrimination of changes in the fundamental frequency (F0) of a complex tone (e.g. Wallaert et al, 2018; for a review, see Moore, 2014b). However, for many of these tasks, poor performance may be explained by poorer frequency selectivity rather than deficits in TFS (e.g.…”

“…Ferguson and Moore, 2014). Given that SNHL in adults has been linked to reduced processing efficiency (i.e., the ability to make optimal use of available sensory information; Füllgrabe et al, 2015;Paraouty et al, 2016;Wallaert et al, 2017;Wallaert et al, 2018), we might therefore expect to see a similar, or even enhanced relationship between cognition and AP for children with…”