Schedule of Events | Symposia

Sketchpad Series

Exploring the relationship between age-related hearing loss and the neural correlates of speech processing

Poster Session F - Tuesday, April 1, 2025, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Sara Jani^1,2 (sara.jani@mail.utoronto.ca), Claude Alain^1,2; ¹University of Toronto, ²Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest Hospital, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Age-related hearing loss (ARHL) is the most prevalent sensory impairment in older adults, with a growing body of evidence linking it to cognitive decline. Specifically, older adults with more severe ARHL are theorised to have increased difficulties with auditory and speech processing, which evidence from electrophysiological studies has correlated with hyperactivation in brain regions involved in auditory processing. However, the relationships between ARHL, cognitive decline, and the neural correlates of speech processing are currently not well defined. Auditory evoked responses were measured in 48 participants (mean age = 71.5, 56% female) with bilateral mild-to-moderate ARHL, using 64-channel electroencephalography recording while undertaking an auditory oddball target detection task. Participants were presented with the English consonant-vowel phonemes /ba/, /pa/, and /ta/, and asked to respond with a button press upon hearing the syllable /ta/. We measured auditory evoked responses related to sensory encoding, discrimination, and decision making using the P100, mismatch negativity (MMN), and P3b waves respectively. While this work is ongoing, our preliminary results suggest a negative correlation between ARHL and speech processing, such that individuals with more severe ARHL display greater deficits in differentiating speech tokens. These findings are reflected in a reduced MMN response in individuals with greater ARHL. As the MMN response reflects automatic detection of unexpected sensory input, reduction in this response may indicate increased difficulty in discriminating speech stimuli. As participants also performed a neuropsychological test battery during each testing session, future analyses will aim to identify the relationship between neural responses, ARHL, and cognitive status.

Topic Area: PERCEPTION & ACTION: Audition