Physiological markers of listening effort and their dependence on age

听力努力的生理标志及其对年龄的依赖性

• 批准号: 10705844
• 负责人: Juraj Mesik
• 金额: $ 19.38万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-09-15 至 2025-07-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10705844
• 关键词: Acoustics; Adult; Affect; Age; Aging; Algorithms; Auditory area; Behavior; Behavioral; Clinical; Cognition; Cognitive; Complex; Comprehension; Cues; Data; Dependence; Development; Diagnosis; Diagnostic; Elderly; Electroencephalography; Evaluation; Exhibits; Foundations; Future; Goals; Hearing; Human; Impairment; Knowledge; Learning; Link; Masks; Measures; Methods; Modeling; Mydriasis; Noise; Participant; Pathway interactions; Patient Self-Report; Pattern; Persons; Physiological; Population; Process; Pupil; Reporting; Research; Resources; Role; Sample Size; Sampling; Self-Help Devices; Semantics; Signal Transduction; Social Functioning; Speech; Speech Intelligibility; Speech Perception; Techniques; Testing; Variant; Work; age effect; age related; auditory processing; cognitive process; diagnostic tool; experience; healthy aging; hearing impairment; indexing; insight; language processing; lexical; neural; novel; novel diagnostics; response; speech processing; speech recognition; tool

Speech understanding is a key function of human audition with important roles in learning, professional, and social functions. Ageing is associated with increased difficulties with speech recognition, particularly in noisy backgrounds, although traditional clinical tests frequently fail to account for subjective speech perception difficulties. A growing body of work has identified increased compensatory use of cognitive resources, collectively known as listening effort (LE), as a key change within the ageing and hearing-impaired populations. Consequently, accurate measures of LE may serve as critical objective diagnostic tools for quantifying subjective speech perception deficits. While multiple methods for quantifying LE have been proposed, little is known about whether these measures reflect usage of the same underlying cognitive processes, particularly in the context of continuous speech in the presence of other meaningful speech maskers. Moreover, little is known about whether changes in LE affect processing of lower- and higher-level features (e.g., acoustic envelope vs. lexical surprisal) throughout the auditory cortical hierarchy. This proposal will address these important gaps in our knowledge. In Aim 1, we will manipulate LE demands via changes in signal-to-noise ratio or spatial cues in a speech recognition task utilizing isolated sentences masked by competing speech, while measuring three commonly used measures of LE (self-report, pupil size, and neural measure of alpha band power). We will then correlate these measures with one another to determine whether they are similarly modulated by intelligibility manipulations, indicating common underlying cognitive processes. In Aim 2, we will address two key questions. First, we will test whether the LE measures used in Aim 1 exhibit similar relationships with one another in the context of more naturalistic, continuous speech, more closely mimicking scenarios in which speech perception difficulties are commonly encountered. Second, we will use advanced model-based analyses to decompose speech-evoked electroencephalographic activity into responses to lower- and higher-level features of both attended and ignored speech and assess how LE manipulations modulate these representations. Doing so, we will gain novel insights into the interaction between higher-order cognitive processes and the language processing pathways in the cortex, potentially revealing new neural signatures of LE. Finally, to gain deeper understanding of aging effects on LE and speech processing, we will assess how each Aim’s key measures change as a function of age. This work will provide foundation for future studies aimed at a more detailed characterization of the effects of different cognitive processes involved in LE on cortical processing of attended and ignored speech, with potential applications in diagnostics of speech processing deficits, particularly in scenarios where standard clinical tests fail to detect an impairment, and in testing speech-perception benefits from new algorithms used in hearing- assisting devices.

语音理解是人类试听的关键功能，在学习，专业和 社会功能。衰老与语音识别的难度增加有关，尤其是在噪声中 背景，尽管传统的临床测试经常无法说明主观语音感知 困难。越来越多的工作已经确定了认知资源的补偿性使用，共同确定 被称为听力工作（LE），是老化和听力障碍人群中的关键变化。 因此，LE的准确度量可能是量化主观的关键客观诊断工具 语音感知定义。尽管已经提出了多种量化LE的方法，但对 这些措施是否反映了相同基本认知过程的使用，特别是在 在其他有意义的语音面具在场的情况下，持续的言语。而且，关于是否知道是否 LE影响较低和高级特征的处理的变化（例如，声学包络与词汇惊喜） 在整个听觉皮层层次结构中。该建议将在我们的知识中解决这些重要差距。在 AIM 1，我们将通过语音识别中的信噪比或空间提示来操纵LE需求 使用竞争性演讲掩盖的孤立句子的任务，同时测量三个常用措施 LE（自我报告，学生大小和α带功率的神经测量）。然后，我们将关联这些测量值 彼此以确定它们是否同样受到可理解操作的调节，表明 共同的基本认知过程。在AIM 2中，我们将解决两个关键问题。首先，我们将测试是否 在AIM 1中使用的LE测量值在更自然的背景下暴露了相似的关系， 连续的言语，更紧密地模仿语音感知难度的情况 遭遇。其次，我们将使用基于高级模型的分析分解语音诱发的 脑电图活动成对参加和忽略的低级和高级特征的响应 语音和评估LE操纵如何调节这些表示形式。这样做，我们将获得新颖的见解 进入高阶认知过程与语言处理途径之间的相互作用 皮质，有可能揭示LE的新神经签名。最后，要深入了解衰老效应 关于LE和语音处理，我们将评估每个目标的关键措施如何随着年龄的变化而变化。这 工作将为未来的研究提供基础，以更详细地表征不同的影响 LE涉及的认知过程在出席和忽略的语音的皮质处理方面具有潜力 在语音处理缺陷的诊断中的应用，特别是在标准临床测试的情况下 无法检测到损害，并且在测试语音感知的益处中，从听证会中使用的新算法 - 协助设备。