Cortical and Subjective Measures of Individual Noise Tolerance
Presentation Type
Poster
Faculty Advisor
Subong Kim
Access Type
Event
Start Date
26-4-2024 11:15 AM
End Date
26-4-2024 12:15 PM
Description
A chief complaint of hearing aid users is increased difficulty understanding speech in noise. Although noise reduction (NR) algorithms are implemented in most digital hearing aids (HA) to attenuate background noise, the NR feature results in speech distortions which are not perceived equally among HA users. However, little is known about the factors that drive these differences in perceptual benefits from NR. We recently documented that cortical measures of individual noise tolerance (coined neural SNR) may predict NR outcomes. Our goal was to investigate if neural SNR and perceptual benefits differs with different NR strengths. Further, given that differences in noise-evoked potentials mainly drive the variance in the neural SNR, we investigated whether subjective measures of noise tolerance could correlate with the neural SNR. Our results indicated that cortical measures of individual noise tolerance can predict NR outcomes with different strengths. It should be noted that subjective measures of noise tolerance explained additional variance in NR outcomes. These findings suggest that cortical and subjective measures capture different aspects of individual noise tolerance that may determine an individual’s perceptual benefits from NR.
Cortical and Subjective Measures of Individual Noise Tolerance
A chief complaint of hearing aid users is increased difficulty understanding speech in noise. Although noise reduction (NR) algorithms are implemented in most digital hearing aids (HA) to attenuate background noise, the NR feature results in speech distortions which are not perceived equally among HA users. However, little is known about the factors that drive these differences in perceptual benefits from NR. We recently documented that cortical measures of individual noise tolerance (coined neural SNR) may predict NR outcomes. Our goal was to investigate if neural SNR and perceptual benefits differs with different NR strengths. Further, given that differences in noise-evoked potentials mainly drive the variance in the neural SNR, we investigated whether subjective measures of noise tolerance could correlate with the neural SNR. Our results indicated that cortical measures of individual noise tolerance can predict NR outcomes with different strengths. It should be noted that subjective measures of noise tolerance explained additional variance in NR outcomes. These findings suggest that cortical and subjective measures capture different aspects of individual noise tolerance that may determine an individual’s perceptual benefits from NR.
Comments
Additional Authors: Kristen Nortwich, Alexis Rooney