Cortical Correlates of Binaural Temporal Processing Deficits in Older Adults.
Ann Clock Eddins, David A Eddins
PMID 29135686WHAT IT FOUND
Older adults with normal hearing or mild-to-moderate hearing loss gained less benefit from out-of-phase cues at 500 Hz than younger adults, while 4000-Hz benefit did not differ by group.
The pattern suggests reduced temporal fine-structure processing with age.
Key findings
01At 500 Hz, younger adults had larger behavioral masking-level differences than both older groups in Gaussian and low-noise maskers.
02Cortical masking-level differences showed the same 500-Hz group pattern and correlated with behavioral masking-level differences across groups.
03At 4000 Hz, no significant group differences were found for behavioral or cortical masking-level differences.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study had 10 listeners in each group, and the authors note that this small sample made cortical latency and amplitude measures less reliable than thresholds. The two older groups did not differ from each other on the main masking-level difference measures, so this study does not show whether hearing loss adds to the age effect. The study measured tone detection and cortical thresholds, not everyday speech recognition. Cortical thresholds were 10 to 15 dB SPL higher than behavioral thresholds, so the electrophysiological measure is not interchangeable with behavioral threshold. No eyeblink monitoring was used during cortical recording. The authors note that differences from some earlier studies may reflect methodological differences in noise bandwidth, masker gating, and low-noise noise generation.
Declared interests
The supplied text does not include an author conflict-of-interest declaration. The publication types list NIH extramural research support.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that older adults with hearing loss have a general hearing-in-noise deficit caused by peripheral hearing loss. The study measured tone detection and cortical thresholds, not speech recognition, and older adults with normal hearing also showed reduced low-frequency masking release.