Masking release in hearing loss: cochlear compression and effective audibility

听力损失中的掩蔽释放：耳蜗压缩和有效听觉

• 批准号: 7891979
• 负责人: Peggy B Nelson
• 金额: $ 4.72万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2008-04-01 至 2013-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7891979
• 关键词: Access to Information; Accounting; Affect; Algorithms; Auditory; Basilar Membrane; Cochlear Hearing Loss; Companions; Devices; Elderly; Environment; Frequencies; Future; Hearing; Hearing Aids; Lead; Life; Masks; Measures; Methods; Modeling; Nature; Noise; Output; Pattern; Performance; Peripheral; Physiology; Play; Process; Psychoacoustics; Psychophysiology; Recovery; Reliance; Research; Residual state; Resolution; Role; Sensorineural Hearing Loss; Signal Transduction; Simulate; Source; Speech; Speech Intelligibility; System; Test Result; Testing; Time; base; computerized data processing; design; experience; hearing impairment; improved; indexing; models and simulation; public health relevance; remediation; research study; response; sound; speech recognition

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Listeners with sensorineural hearing loss experience significantly more masking and significantly less release from masking than do listeners with normal hearing sensitivity. When background noise is intermittent, normal- hearing (NH) listeners take advantage of the momentary dips in the noise to understand the target signal. This benefit is termed masking release (MR). Hearing-impaired (HI) listeners do not experience the same degree of MR as NH listeners. As a result, HI listeners cannot understand speech in noisy environments at the same signal-to-noise ratios in which NH listeners can understand successfully. At the same time, listeners with hearing loss frequently complain that their amplification devices are not satisfactory in background noise. We propose to further our understanding of the masking and MR experienced by listeners with hearing loss and to investigate the causes and potential sources of remediation. In Experiment 1 we will test MR in speech recognition experiments across a wide range of noise and signal levels and bandwidths. We will test NH and HI listeners, as well as NH listeners whose thresholds will be elevated by noise to match those of the HI listeners. We will measure listeners' sentence recognition in quiet, steady noise, and fluctuating noise and will define MR as the performance difference between steady and fluctuating noise. We hypothesize based on preliminary results that signal audibility will not fully explain the reduced MR of HI listeners, and that additional variability is explained by HI listeners' reduced access to spectrotemporal information about the speech in the dips of noise. We further hypothesize that underlying changes in cochlear physiology can explain HI listeners' difficulty in conditions of intermittent noise, and we propose to measure cochlear function in Experiment 2. We will measure basilar membrane input/output responses, masking period patterns, modulation masking, and frequency selectivity to describe HI listeners' cochlear function. We will use results from Experiment 2 to compute the adjusted effective audibility experienced by HI listeners taking into account the loss of cochlear gain experienced by HI listeners. In Section 3 we will model and simulate the effects of cochlear hearing loss based on speech recognition and psychoacoustic test results obtained from the same listeners. We hypothesize that these models and simulations will provide accurate and useful predictions of MR in young HI listeners. We will use the resulting models and simulations as empirically based first steps in evaluating signal processing for noise reduction. In later years the models can also be applied further to listeners with severe hearing loss, and to elderly listeners with hearing loss. Overall, the findings will contribute to our understanding of the nature of hearing loss, the effects of reduced audibility and cochlear gain, and the implications for understanding speech in a variety of noise backgrounds. We hypothesize that improving our understanding of the nature of reduced masking release will improve our ability to develop signal processing algorithms that can more effectively remediate HI listeners' difficulties in noise. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE Results from the proposed experiments and models will help understand hearing-impaired listeners' difficulty understanding speech in background noise. We anticipate that models developed in this project will lay the groundwork for evaluating signal-processing algorithms to maximize speech intelligibility in noise.

描述（由申请人提供）：与听力敏感度正常的听众相比，感音神经性听力损失的听众经历的掩蔽明显更多，掩蔽释放明显更少。当背景噪声是间歇性的时，听力正常 (NH) 的听众会利用噪声的瞬时下降来理解目标信号。这种好处称为掩蔽释放 (MR)。听力受损 (HI) 听众体验到的 MR 程度与 NH 听众不同。因此，HI 听众无法以 NH 听众能够成功理解的相同信噪比理解噪声环境中的语音。与此同时，有听力损失的听众经常抱怨他们的扩音设备在背景噪音方面不能令人满意。我们建议进一步了解听力损失听众所经历的掩蔽和 MR，并调查其原因和潜在的补救来源。在实验 1 中，我们将在各种噪声和信号电平以及带宽的语音识别实验中测试 MR。我们将测试 NH 和 HI 听众，以及 NH 听众，其阈值将通过噪声提高以匹配 HI 听众的阈值。我们将测量听众在安静、稳定噪声和波动噪声中的句子识别能力，并将 MR 定义为稳定噪声和波动噪声之间的性能差异。根据初步结果，我们假设信号可听度不能完全解释 HI 听众的 MR 降低，而额外的变异性可以通过 HI 听众在噪声低谷中获取有关语音的频谱时间信息的减少来解释。我们进一步假设耳蜗生理学的潜在变化可以解释 HI 听众在间歇性噪音条件下的困难，并且我们建议在实验 2 中测量耳蜗功能。我们将测量基底膜输入/输出响应、掩蔽周期模式、调制掩蔽和频率选择性来描述 HI 听众的耳蜗功能。我们将使用实验 2 的结果来计算 HI 听众所经历的调整后的有效听力，同时考虑到 HI 听众经历的耳蜗增益损失。在第 3 节中，我们将根据从同一听众获得的语音识别和心理声学测试结果来建模和模拟耳蜗听力损失的影响。我们假设这些模型和模拟将为年轻 HI 听众提供准确且有用的 MR 预测。我们将使用所得模型和模拟作为评估降噪信号处理的基于经验的第一步。在以后的几年中，这些模型还可以进一步应用于患有严重听力损失的听众以及患有听力损失的老年听众。总体而言，这些发现将有助于我们了解听力损失的本质、可听度和耳蜗增益降低的影响，以及对理解各种噪声背景下的语音的影响。我们假设，提高我们对减少掩蔽释放本质的理解将提高我们开发信号处理算法的能力，从而更有效地解决 HI 听众在噪音中遇到的困难。公共卫生相关性所提出的实验和模型的结果将有助于理解听力受损的听众在背景噪声中理解语音的困难。我们预计该项目中开发的模型将为评估信号处理算法奠定基础，以最大限度地提高噪声中的语音清晰度。