WS Audiology A/S, Lynge, Denmark.
Trends Hear. 2022 Jan-Dec;26:23312165221099894. doi: 10.1177/23312165221099894.
In recent years, a growing body of literature has explored the effect of hearing impairment on the neural processing of speech, particularly related to the neural tracking of speech envelopes. However, only limited work has focused on the potential usage of the method for evaluating the effect of hearing aids designed to amplify and process the auditory input provided to hearing-impaired listeners. The current study investigates how directional sound processing in hearing-aids, denoted directionality, affects the neural tracking and encoding of speech in EEG recorded from 11 older hearing-impaired listeners. Behaviorally, the task performance improved when directionality was applied, while subjective ratings of listening effort were not affected. The reconstruction of the to-be-attended speech envelopes improved significantly when applying directionality, as well as when removing the background noise altogether. When inspecting the modelled response of the neural encoding of speech, a faster transition was observed between the early bottom-up response and the later top-down attentional-driven responses when directionality was applied. In summary, hearing-aid directionality affects both the neural speech tracking and neural encoding of to-be-attended speech. This result shows that hearing-aid signal processing impacts the neural processing of sounds and that neural speech tracking is indicative of the benefits associated with applying hearing-aid processing algorithms.
近年来，越来越多的文献探讨了听力障碍对言语神经处理的影响，特别是与言语包络的神经跟踪相关的影响。然而，只有有限的工作关注到该方法在评估旨在放大和处理听力受损听众听觉输入的助听器效果方面的潜在应用。本研究调查了助听器中的定向声音处理（方向性）如何影响从 11 名老年听力受损听众记录的 EEG 中言语的神经跟踪和编码。行为上，当应用方向性时，任务表现得到了改善，而听力努力的主观评分不受影响。当应用方向性时，以及当完全去除背景噪声时，待关注的言语包络的重建得到了显著改善。当检查言语的神经编码的模拟响应时，当应用方向性时，在早期的自下而上响应和后来的自上而下注意力驱动的响应之间观察到更快的转变。总的来说，助听器的方向性影响到对言语的神经跟踪和对要关注的言语的神经编码。这一结果表明，助听器信号处理会影响声音的神经处理，而神经言语跟踪是与应用助听器处理算法相关的益处的指示。
