Perception of Speech in Noise: Neural Correlates

12 years 7 months ago

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■ The presence of irrelevant auditory information (other talkers, environmental noises) presents a major challenge to listening to speech. The fundamental frequency (F0) of the target speaker is thought to provide an important cue for the extraction of the speakerʼs voice from background noise, but little is known about the relationship between speech-in-noise (SIN) perceptual ability and neural encoding of the F0. Motivated by recent findings that music and language experience enhance brainstem representation of sound, we examined the hypothesis that brainstem encoding of the F0 is diminished to a greater degree by background noise in people with poorer perceptual abilities in noise. To this end, we measured speech-evoked auditory brainstem responses to /da/ in quiet and two multitalker babble conditions (two-talker and six-talker) in native English-speaking young adults who ranged in their ability to perceive and recall SIN. Listeners who were poorer performers on a standardized ...

Judy H. Song, Erika Skoe, Karen Banai, Nina Kraus

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