Age-Related Changes in the Auditory Brainstem Response and Suprathreshold Processing of Temporal and Spectral Modulation.
John H Grose, Emily Buss, Hollis Elmore
PMID 30977442WHAT IT FOUND
Temporal and spectral modulation detection did not differ between older adults with near-normal hearing and young adults, even though older adults had reduced Wave I relative to Wave V.
Modulation tests did not reveal age-related cochlear synaptopathy.
Key findings
01Older adults with near-normal hearing showed lower Wave I amplitude than Wave V amplitude, while young adults did not show this difference.
02Temporal modulation detection did not differ between older and young adults across levels and background noise.
03Spectral modulation detection did not differ between older and young adults across levels and ripple rates.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The groups were small, and the experiments had little overlap in subjects. The older adults were not fully normal-hearing because many had elevated thresholds at 8000 Hz. The young group contained more females than the older group in the auditory brainstem response experiment, and female sex is associated with larger amplitudes. The Wave I/Wave V difference could be explained by high-frequency hearing loss or age-related neural jitter rather than cochlear synaptopathy. Temporal modulation detection used minimally salient modulation and may not capture deficits seen with stronger modulation. Spectral modulation was tested only up to 2 cycles per octave, so it did not cover the range where previous work showed thresholds worsen at higher rates.
Declared interests
Funding was from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. The paper does not report other conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that cochlear synaptopathy is proven by the Wave I/Wave V result or that modulation detection explains age-related hearing difficulty. The modulation tests were null, and the authors state the ABR pattern is not conclusive.