Biology subjects

Zaar, J.

Publications and source records attributed to Zaar, J..

5 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2024

Speech-reception-threshold estimation via EEG-based continuous speech envelope reconstruction

This study investigates the potential of speech-reception-threshold (SRT) estimation through electroencephalography (EEG) based envelope reconstruction techniques with continuous speech. Additionally, we investigate the influence of the stimulis signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) on the temporal response function (TRF). Twenty young normal-hearing participants listened to audiobook excerpts with varying background noise levels while EEG was recorded. A linear decoder was trained to reconstruct the speech envelope from the EEG data. The reconstruction accuracy was calculated as the Pearsons correlation between the reconstructed and actual speech envelopes. An EEG SRT estimate (SRTneuro) was obtained as the midpoint of a sigmoid function fitted to the reconstruction accuracy versus SNR data points. Additionally, the TRF was estimated at each SNR level, followed by a statistical analysis to reveal significant effects of SNR levels on the latencies and amplitudes of the most prominent components. The SRTneuro was within 3 dB of the behavioral SRT for all participants. The TRF analysis showed a significant latency decrease for N1 and P2 and a significant amplitude magnitude increase for N1 and P2 with increasing SNR. The results suggest that both envelope reconstruction accuracy and the TRF components are influenced by changes in SNR, indicating they may be linked to the same underlying neural process.

bioengineering↗

bioRxiv2023

Impact of age versus hearing loss on amplitude modulation frequency selectivity and speech intelligibility

The perception of amplitude modulation (AM), characterized by a frequency-selective process in the modulation domain, is considered critical for speech intelligibility. Previous literature has provided evidence of an age-related decline in AM frequency selectivity. Additionally, a notable sharpening of AM tuning with hearing loss has been observed, which was proposed to be related to a perceptual advantage resulting from peripheral compression loss. This study explores whether such changes in AM tuning with age and hearing loss contribute to the speech intelligibility challenges that older listeners often face in noisy environments. Young (n=10, 22-28 years) and older (n=9, 57-77 years) listeners with normal hearing as well as older listeners with hearing impairment (n=9, 64-77 years) participated in the study. All had previously taken part in studies on AM tuning. Speech-reception thresholds (SRTs) were collected in conditions including stationary, fluctuating, and competing-speech maskers. The results revealed an age-related increase in SRTs, with an additional negative impact of hearing loss. Beyond age and audibility, a measure of AM tuning significantly contributed to explaining the variance in SRTs across listeners for specific maskers. These findings motivate further exploration of the relationship between AM frequency selectivity and speech intelligibility in noise.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2023

Disentangling the effects of hearing loss and age on amplitude modulation frequency selectivity

The processing and perception of amplitude modulation (AM) in the auditory system reflect a frequency-selective process, often described as a modulation filterbank. Previous studies on perceptual AM masking reported similar results for older listeners with hearing impairment (HI) and young listeners with normal hearing (NH), suggesting no effects of age or hearing loss on AM frequency selectivity. However, recent evidence has shown that age, independently of hearing loss, adversely affects AM frequency selectivity. Hence, this study aimed to disentangle the effects of hearing loss and age. A simultaneous AM masking paradigm was employed, utilizing a sinusoidal carrier at 2.8 kHz, narrow-band noise modulation maskers, and target modulation frequencies of 4, 16, 64, and 128 Hz. The results obtained from young (n=3, 24-30 years) and older (n=10, 63-77 years) HI listeners were compared to previously obtained data from young and older NH listeners. Notably, the HI listeners generally exhibited lower (unmasked) AM detection thresholds and greater AM frequency selectivity than their NH counterparts in both age groups. Overall, the results suggest that age negatively affects AM frequency selectivity for both NH and HI listeners, while hearing loss improves AM detection and AM selectivity, likely due to the loss of peripheral compression.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2023

Cortical over-representation of phonetic onsets of ignored speech in hearing impaired individuals

Hearing impairment alters the sound input received by the human auditory system, reducing speech comprehension in noisy multi-talker auditory scenes. Despite such challenges, attentional modulation on the envelope tracking in multi-talker scenarios is comparable between normal hearing (NH) and hearing impaired (HI) participants, with previous research suggesting an over-representation of the speech envelopes in HI individuals (see, e.g., Fuglsang et al. 2020 and Presacco et al. 2019), even though HI participants reported difficulties in performing the task. This result raises an important question: What speech-processing stage could reflect the difficulty in attentional selection, if not envelope tracking? Here, we use scalp electroencephalography (EEG) to test the hypothesis that such difficulties are underpinned by an over-representation of phonological-level information of the ignored speech sounds. To do so, we carried out a re-analysis of an EEG dataset where EEG signals were recorded as HI participants fitted with hearing aids attended to one speaker (target) while ignoring a competing speaker (masker) and spatialised multi-talker background noise. Multivariate temporal response function analyses revealed that EEG signals reflect stronger phonetic-feature encoding for target than masker speech streams. Interestingly, robust EEG encoding of phoneme onsets emerged for both target and masker streams, in contrast with previous work on NH participants and in line with our hypothesis of an over-representation of the masker. Stronger phoneme-onset encoding emerged for the masker, pointing to a possible neural basis for the higher distractibility experienced by HI individuals. Significance StatementThis study investigated the neural underpinnings of attentional selection in multi-talker scenarios in hearing-impaired participants. The impact of attentional selection on phonological encoding was assessed with electroencephalography (EEG) in an immersive multi-talker scenario. EEG signals encoded the phonetic features of the target (attended) speech more strongly than those of the masker (ignored) speech; but interestingly, they encoded the phoneme onsets of both target and masker speech. This suggests that the cortex of hearing-impaired individuals may over-represent higher-level features of ignored speech sounds, which could contribute to their higher distractibility in noisy environments. These findings provide insight into the neural mechanisms underlying speech comprehension in hearing-impaired individuals and could inform the development of novel approaches to improve speech perception in noisy environments.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2022

Multilevel Modelling of Gaze from Hearing-impaired Listeners following a Realistic Conversation

PurposeThere is a need for outcome measures that predict real-world communication abilities in hearing-impaired people. We outline a potential method for this and use it to answer the question of when, and how much, hearing-impaired listeners look towards a new talker in a conversation. MethodTwenty-two older hearing-impaired adults followed a pre-recorded two-person audiovisual conversation in the presence of babble noise. We compared their eye-gaze direction to the conversation in two multilevel logistic regression (MLR) analyses. First, we split the conversation into events classified by the number of active talkers within a turn or a transition, and we tested if these predicted the listeners gaze. Second, we mapped the odds that a listener gazed towards a new talker over time during a conversation transition. ResultsWe found no evidence that our conversation events predicted changes in the listeners gaze, but the listeners gaze towards the new talker during a silent-transition was predicted by time: The odds of looking at the new talker increased in an s-shaped curve from at least 0.4 seconds before to 1 second after the onset of the new talkers speech. A comparison of models with different random effects indicated that more variance was explained by differences between individual conversation events than by differences between individual listeners. ConclusionMLR modelling of eye-gaze during talker transitions is a promising approach to study a listeners perception of realistic conversation. Our experience provides insight to guide future research with this method.

neuroscience↗