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Hidden Hearing Loss Impacts the Neural Representation of Speech in Background Noise

Many individuals with seemingly normal hearing abilities struggle to understand speech in noisy backgrounds. To understand why this might be the case, we investigated the neural representation of speech in the auditory midbrain of gerbils with “hidden hearing loss” through noise exposure that increa...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Monaghan, Jessica J.M., Garcia-Lazaro, Jose A., McAlpine, David, Schaette, Roland
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Cell Press 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7728162/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33035490
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2020.09.046
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author Monaghan, Jessica J.M.
Garcia-Lazaro, Jose A.
McAlpine, David
Schaette, Roland
author_facet Monaghan, Jessica J.M.
Garcia-Lazaro, Jose A.
McAlpine, David
Schaette, Roland
author_sort Monaghan, Jessica J.M.
collection PubMed
description Many individuals with seemingly normal hearing abilities struggle to understand speech in noisy backgrounds. To understand why this might be the case, we investigated the neural representation of speech in the auditory midbrain of gerbils with “hidden hearing loss” through noise exposure that increased hearing thresholds only temporarily. In noise-exposed animals, we observed significantly increased neural responses to speech stimuli, with a more pronounced increase at moderate than at high sound intensities. Noise exposure reduced discriminability of neural responses to speech in background noise at high sound intensities, with impairment most severe for tokens with relatively greater spectral energy in the noise-exposure frequency range (2–4 kHz). At moderate sound intensities, discriminability was surprisingly improved, which was unrelated to spectral content. A model combining damage to high-threshold auditory nerve fibers with increased response gain of central auditory neurons reproduced these effects, demonstrating that a specific combination of peripheral damage and central compensation could explain listening difficulties despite normal hearing thresholds.
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spelling pubmed-77281622020-12-13 Hidden Hearing Loss Impacts the Neural Representation of Speech in Background Noise Monaghan, Jessica J.M. Garcia-Lazaro, Jose A. McAlpine, David Schaette, Roland Curr Biol Article Many individuals with seemingly normal hearing abilities struggle to understand speech in noisy backgrounds. To understand why this might be the case, we investigated the neural representation of speech in the auditory midbrain of gerbils with “hidden hearing loss” through noise exposure that increased hearing thresholds only temporarily. In noise-exposed animals, we observed significantly increased neural responses to speech stimuli, with a more pronounced increase at moderate than at high sound intensities. Noise exposure reduced discriminability of neural responses to speech in background noise at high sound intensities, with impairment most severe for tokens with relatively greater spectral energy in the noise-exposure frequency range (2–4 kHz). At moderate sound intensities, discriminability was surprisingly improved, which was unrelated to spectral content. A model combining damage to high-threshold auditory nerve fibers with increased response gain of central auditory neurons reproduced these effects, demonstrating that a specific combination of peripheral damage and central compensation could explain listening difficulties despite normal hearing thresholds. Cell Press 2020-12-07 /pmc/articles/PMC7728162/ /pubmed/33035490 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2020.09.046 Text en © 2020 The Author(s) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Monaghan, Jessica J.M.
Garcia-Lazaro, Jose A.
McAlpine, David
Schaette, Roland
Hidden Hearing Loss Impacts the Neural Representation of Speech in Background Noise
title Hidden Hearing Loss Impacts the Neural Representation of Speech in Background Noise
title_full Hidden Hearing Loss Impacts the Neural Representation of Speech in Background Noise
title_fullStr Hidden Hearing Loss Impacts the Neural Representation of Speech in Background Noise
title_full_unstemmed Hidden Hearing Loss Impacts the Neural Representation of Speech in Background Noise
title_short Hidden Hearing Loss Impacts the Neural Representation of Speech in Background Noise
title_sort hidden hearing loss impacts the neural representation of speech in background noise
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7728162/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33035490
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2020.09.046
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