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Category: Hearing Loss

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Clinical relevance Grants Hearing Loss Job Offers

New research grant with Sivantos

Jonas and the lab are hap­py and thank­ful to announce a new research project fund­ed by Sivan­tos, Erlan­gen. We are look­ing very much for­ward to a renewed col­lab­o­ra­tion with the audi­o­log­i­cal sci­ence team around Ron­ny Han­ne­mann, begin­ning in Octo­ber 2019.

The three-year project will look into the psy­cho­log­i­cal and neu­ro­bi­o­log­i­cal chal­lenges of attend­ing and ignor­ing for nor­mal-hear­ing and hear­ing-impaired lis­ten­ers in com­plex acoustic scenes.

Categories
Auditory Cortex Auditory Perception Auditory Speech Processing Hearing Loss Papers Perception Publications Speech

New paper in Ear and Hear­ing: Erb, Lud­wig, Kunke, Fuchs & Obleser on speech com­pre­hen­sion with a cochlear implant

We are excit­ed to share the results from our col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Cochlea Implant Cen­ter Leipzig: AC post­doc Julia Erb’s new paper on how 4‑Hz mod­u­la­tion sen­si­tiv­i­ty can inform us on 6‑month speech com­pre­hen­sion out­come in cochlear implants.

Erb J, Lud­wig AA, Kunke D, Fuchs M, & Obleser J (2018). Tem­po­ral sen­si­tiv­i­ty mea­sured short­ly after cochlear implan­ta­tion pre­dicts six-month speech recog­ni­tion outcome

Now avail­able online:

https://insights.ovid.com/crossref?an=00003446–900000000-98942

Abstract:

Objec­tives:

Psy­choa­coustic tests assessed short­ly after cochlear implan­ta­tion are use­ful pre­dic­tors of the reha­bil­i­ta­tive speech out­come. While large­ly inde­pen­dent, both spec­tral and tem­po­ral res­o­lu­tion tests are impor­tant to pro­vide an accu­rate pre­dic­tion of speech recog­ni­tion. How­ev­er, rapid tests of tem­po­ral sen­si­tiv­i­ty are cur­rent­ly lack­ing. Here, we pro­pose a sim­ple ampli­tude mod­u­la­tion rate dis­crim­i­na­tion (AMRD) par­a­digm that is val­i­dat­ed by pre­dict­ing future speech recog­ni­tion in adult cochlear implant (CI) patients.

Design:

In 34 new­ly implant­ed patients, we used an adap­tive AMRD par­a­digm, where broad­band noise was mod­u­lat­ed at the speech-rel­e­vant rate of ~4 Hz. In a lon­gi­tu­di­nal study, speech recog­ni­tion in qui­et was assessed using the closed-set Freiburg­er num­ber test short­ly after cochlear implan­ta­tion (t0) as well as the open-set Freiburg­er mono­syl­lab­ic word test 6 months lat­er (t6).

Results:

Both AMRD thresh­olds at t0 (r = –0.51) and speech recog­ni­tion scores at t0 (r = 0.56) pre­dict­ed speech recog­ni­tion scores at t6. How­ev­er, AMRD and speech recog­ni­tion at t0 were uncor­re­lat­ed, sug­gest­ing that those mea­sures cap­ture par­tial­ly dis­tinct per­cep­tu­al abil­i­ties. A mul­ti­ple regres­sion mod­el pre­dict­ing 6‑month speech recog­ni­tion out­come with deaf­ness dura­tion and speech recog­ni­tion at t0 improved from adjust­ed R2 = 0.30 to adjust­ed R2 = 0.44 when AMRD thresh­old was added as a predictor.

Con­clu­sions:

These find­ings iden­ti­fy AMRD thresh­olds as a reli­able, nonre­dun­dant pre­dic­tor above and beyond estab­lished speech tests for CI out­come. This AMRD test could poten­tial­ly be devel­oped into a rapid clin­i­cal tem­po­ral-res­o­lu­tion test to be inte­grat­ed into the post­op­er­a­tive test bat­tery to improve the reli­a­bil­i­ty of speech out­come prognosis.

 

Categories
Auditory Cortex Auditory Neuroscience Brain stimulation Clinical relevance Degraded Acoustics Hearing Loss Neural Oscillations Neural Phase Papers Psychology Speech

New paper in press with the Old­en­burg brain-stim­u­la­tion crew!

AC alum­na Anna Wilsch has a new paper in press in Neu­roim­age, with Toralf Neul­ing, Jonas Obleser, and Christoph Her­rmann: “Tran­scra­nial alter­nat­ing cur­rent stim­u­la­tion with speech envelopes mod­u­lates speech com­pre­hen­sion”. In this proof-of-concept–like paper, we demon­strate that using the speech enve­lope as a “pilot sig­nal” for elec­tri­cal­ly stim­u­lat­ing the human brain, while a lis­ten­er tries to com­pre­hend that speech sig­nal buried in noise, does mod­u­late the listener’s speech–in–noise com­pre­hen­sion abilities.

The Preprint is here, … 

… while the abstract goes like this:
Cor­ti­cal entrain­ment of the audi­to­ry cor­tex to the broad­band tem­po­ral enve­lope of a speech sig­nal is cru­cial for speech com­pre­hen­sion. Entrain­ment results in phas­es of high and low neur­al excitabil­i­ty, which struc­ture and decode the incom­ing speech sig­nal. Entrain­ment to speech is strongest in the theta fre­quen­cy range (4−8 Hz), the aver­age fre­quen­cy of the speech enve­lope. If a speech sig­nal is degrad­ed, entrain­ment to the speech enve­lope is weak­er and speech intel­li­gi­bil­i­ty declines. Besides per­cep­tu­al­ly evoked cor­ti­cal entrain­ment, tran­scra­nial alter­nat­ing cur­rent stim­u­la­tion (tACS) entrains neur­al oscil­la­tions by apply­ing an elec­tric sig­nal to the brain. Accord­ing­ly, tACS-induced entrain­ment in audi­to­ry cor­tex has been shown to improve audi­to­ry per­cep­tion. The aim of the cur­rent study was to mod­u­late speech intel­li­gi­bil­i­ty exter­nal­ly by means of tACS such that the elec­tric cur­rent cor­re­sponds to the enve­lope of the pre­sent­ed speech stream (i.e., enve­lope-tACS). Par­tic­i­pants per­formed the Old­en­burg sen­tence test with sen­tences pre­sent­ed in noise in com­bi­na­tion with enve­lope-tACS. Crit­i­cal­ly, tACS was induced at time lags of 0 to 250 ms in 50-ms steps rel­a­tive to sen­tence onset (audi­to­ry stim­uli were simul­ta­ne­ous to or pre­ced­ed tACS). We per­formed sin­gle- sub­ject sinu­soidal, lin­ear, and qua­drat­ic fits to the sen­tence com­pre­hen­sion per­for­mance across the time lags. We could show that the sinu­soidal fit described the mod­u­la­tion of sen­tence com­pre­hen­sion best. Impor­tant­ly, the aver­age fre­quen­cy of the sinu­soidal fit was 5.12 Hz, cor­re­spond­ing to the peaks of the ampli­tude spec­trum of the stim­u­lat­ed envelopes. This find­ing was sup­port­ed by a sig­nif­i­cant 5‑Hz peak in the aver­age pow­er spec­trum of indi­vid­ual per­for­mance time series. Alto­geth­er, enve­lope tACS mod­u­lates intel­li­gi­bil­i­ty of speech in noise, pre­sum­ably by enhanc­ing and dis­rupt­ing (time lag with in- or out-of-phase stim­u­la­tion, respec­tive­ly) cor­ti­cal entrain­ment to the speech enve­lope in audi­to­ry cortex.
Categories
Adaptive Control Auditory Neuroscience EEG / MEG Evoked Activity Hearing Loss Neural Phase Perception Preprints (not peer-reviewed yet) Publications Speech Uncategorized

New preprint paper: Fiedler et al. on pre­dict­ing focus of atten­tion from in-ear EEG

Very proud: PhD stu­dent Lorenz Fiedler goes live (pre-peer-review) with his work of pre­dict­ing the focus of atten­tion in sin­gle-chan­nel/­for­ward mod­els in in-ear EEG!
Here is the preprint of the paper, which now will under­go peer-review. Thanks for check­ing it out!

In-Ear results Fiedler

Categories
Ageing Auditory Speech Processing Degraded Acoustics Hearing Loss Media Publications Speech

Quick inter­view for detektor.fm

Based on Malte’s recent J Neu­rosci study, Jonas did a brief inter­view for Ger­man radio detektor.fm today and talked lis­ten­ing effort, dig­i­tal phone lines, noise reduc­tion, and next-gen­er­a­tion hear­ing aids with host Tere­sa Nehm. (In Ger­man only.)

Categories
Auditory Cortex Auditory Neuroscience Clinical relevance Degraded Acoustics EEG / MEG Executive Functions Hearing Loss Media Neural Oscillations Papers Publications Speech

Max Planck Soci­ety reports on Wöst­mann et al.’s Neur­al alpha dynamics

Some days ago the Max Planck Soci­ety put out a news fea­ture on our most recent Jour­nal of Neu­ro­science paper (see our post):

Aufmerk­sam zuhören — Hirn-Wellen zeigen Mühen des Hörens im Alter an

Sum­ma­ry
Ältere Men­schen kla­gen oft über Hörschwierigkeit­en, beson­ders wenn mehrere Per­so­n­en durcheinan­der sprechen. Forsch­er am Max-Planck-Insti­tut für Kog­ni­tions- und Neu­rowis­senschaften in Leipzig haben her­aus­ge­fun­den, dass der Grund hier­für nicht nur im Ohr, son­dern eben­so in verän­derten Aufmerk­samkeit­sprozessen im Gehirn älter­er Men­schen zu find­en ist. Eine beson­dere Bedeu­tung kommt dabei den Alpha-Wellen zu, deren Anpas­sung an verän­derte Hör­si­t­u­a­tio­nen das Sprachver­ständ­nis in All­t­agssi­t­u­a­tio­nen verbessert.

It nice­ly wraps up Malte’s exper­i­ment on alpha dynam­ics in younger and old­er lis­ten­ers. Check the link above for the full arti­cle (Ger­man).

 

Ref­er­ences

  • Wöst­mann M1, Her­rmann B2, Wilsch A2, Obleser J3. Neur­al alpha dynam­ics in younger and old­er lis­ten­ers reflect acoustic chal­lenges and pre­dic­tive ben­e­fits. J Neu­rosci. 2015 Jan 28;35(4):1458–67. PMID: 25632123. [Open with Read]
Categories
Editorial Notes EEG / MEG Grants Hearing Loss

New grant by the Oti­con Foundation

Our lab has been award­ed a 100,000 € (750,000 DKK) research grant by the Dan­ish Oti­con foun­da­tion.

Togeth­er with Thomas Lun­ner from the Erik­sholm Research Cen­tre, we will explore real-time neur­al (EEG) mea­sures and forms of neur­al hear­ing-aid control.

This work is con­ceived to sup­port and fur­ther devel­op our efforts fund­ed ear­li­er in 2014 by the Volk­swa­gen Foun­da­tion (from the “Exper­i­ment!” call for high-risk projects, 100,000 €).

Categories
Ageing Auditory Cortex Auditory Neuroscience Clinical relevance Degraded Acoustics EEG / MEG Executive Functions Hearing Loss Neural Oscillations Papers Publications Speech

New paper in press in the Jour­nal of Neu­ro­science: Wöst­mann, Her­rmann, Wilsch, & Obleser [UPDATED #2]

Con­grat­u­la­tions to AC PhD stu­dent Malte Wöst­mann for his new­ly accept­ed paper in the Jour­nal of Neu­ro­science!

Wöst­mann M, Her­rmann B, Wilsch A, & Obleser J.

Neur­al alpha dynam­ics in younger and old­er lis­ten­ers reflect acoustic chal­lenges and pre­dic­tive benefits

J Neu­rosci, in press.

Here is the abstract and my favourite fig­ure from Malte’s paper.

Abstract
Speech com­pre­hen­sion in mul­ti-talk­er sit­u­a­tions is a noto­ri­ous real-life chal­lenge, par­tic­u­lar­ly for old­er lis­ten­ers. Younger lis­ten­ers exploit stim­u­lus-inher­ent acoustic detail, but are they also active­ly pre­dict­ing upcom­ing infor­ma­tion? And fur­ther, how do old­er lis­ten­ers deal with acoustic and pre­dic­tive infor­ma­tion? To under­stand the neur­al dynam­ics of lis­ten­ing dif­fi­cul­ties and accord­ing lis­ten­ing strate­gies, we con­trast­ed neur­al respons­es in the alpha-band (~10 Hz) in younger (20−30 years, n = 18) and healthy old­er (60−70 years, n = 20) par­tic­i­pants under chang­ing task demands in a two-talk­er par­a­digm. Elec­troen­cephalo­grams were record­ed while humans lis­tened to two spo­ken dig­its against a dis­tract­ing talk­er and decid­ed whether the sec­ond dig­it was small­er or larg­er. Acoustic detail (tem­po­ral fine struc­ture) and pre­dic­tive­ness (the degree to which the first dig­it pre­dict­ed the sec­ond) var­ied orthog­o­nal­ly. Alpha pow­er at wide­spread scalp sites decreased with increas­ing acoustic detail (dur­ing tar­get dig­it pre­sen­ta­tion) but also with increas­ing pre­dic­tive­ness (in-between tar­get dig­its). For old­er com­pared to younger lis­ten­ers, acoustic detail had a stronger impact on task per­for­mance and alpha pow­er mod­u­la­tion. This sug­gests that alpha dynam­ics plays an impor­tant role in the changes in lis­ten­ing behav­ior that occur with age. Last­ly, alpha pow­er vari­a­tions result­ing from stim­u­lus manip­u­la­tions (of acoustic detail and pre­dic­tive­ness) as well as task-inde­pen­dent over­all alpha pow­er were relat­ed to sub­jec­tive lis­ten­ing effort. The present data show that alpha dynam­ics is a promis­ing neur­al mark­er of indi­vid­ual dif­fi­cul­ties as well as age-relat­ed changes in sen­sa­tion, per­cep­tion, and com­pre­hen­sion in com­plex com­mu­ni­ca­tion situations. 

Screen Shot 2014-12-03 at 13.07.13

Update #2

Ger­man radio broad­cast­er MDR Info did an inter­view & fea­ture on Mal­te’s Exper­i­ment. Check out the stream below:

Ref­er­ences

  • Wöst­mann M1, Her­rmann B2, Wilsch A2, Obleser J3. Neur­al alpha dynam­ics in younger and old­er lis­ten­ers reflect acoustic chal­lenges and pre­dic­tive ben­e­fits. J Neu­rosci. 2015 Jan 28;35(4):1458–67. PMID: 25632123. [Open with Read]