Imperial College London
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Prof. Dr. Tobias Reichenbach

Faculty of Engineering, Department of Bioengineering

Visiting Professor
 
 
 
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Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 6370reichenbach Website

 
 
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Location

 

4.12Royal School of MinesSouth Kensington Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Saiz:2019:10.1038/s41598-019-50773-1,
author = {Saiz, Alia M and Forte, A and Reichenbach, J},
doi = {10.1038/s41598-019-50773-1},
journal = {Scientific Reports},
title = {Individual differences in the attentional modulation of the human auditory brainstem response to speech inform on speech-in-noise deficits},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-50773-1},
volume = {9},
year = {2019}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - People with normal hearing thresholds can nonetheless have difficulty with understanding speech in noisy  backgrounds.  The  origins  of  such  supra-threshold  hearing  deficits  remain  largely  unclear. Previously we showed that the auditory brainstem response to running speech is modulated by selective attention, evidencing a subcortical mechanism that contributes to speech-in-noise comprehension. We observed, however, significant variation in the magnitude of the brainstem’s attentional modulation between the different volunteers. Here we show that this variability relates to the ability of the subjects to understand speech in background noise. In particular, we assessed 43 young human volunteers with normal hearing thresholds for their speech-in-noise comprehension. We also recorded their auditory 30brainstem responses to running speech when selectively attending to one of two competing voices. To control for potential peripheral hearing deficits, and in particular for cochlear synaptopathy, we further assessed  noise  exposure,  the  temporal  sensitivity  threshold,  the  middle-ear  muscle  reflex,  and  the auditory-brainstem response to clicks in various levels of background noise. These tests did not show evidence  for  cochlear  synaptopathy  amongst  the  volunteers.  Furthermore,  we  found  that  only  the attentional modulation of the brainstem response to speech was significantly related to speech-in-noise comprehension. Our results therefore evidence an impact of top-down modulation of brainstem activity on the variability in speech-in-noise comprehension amongst the subjects.
AU  - Saiz,Alia M
AU  - Forte,A
AU  - Reichenbach,J
DO  - 10.1038/s41598-019-50773-1
PY  - 2019///
SN  - 2045-2322
TI  - Individual differences in the attentional modulation of the human auditory brainstem response to speech inform on speech-in-noise deficits
T2  - Scientific Reports
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-50773-1
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/73642
VL  - 9
ER  -
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