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🪵 The Threshold

Monaural temporal fine structure processing declines with age even without hearing loss.

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tagsja-picks, xref, question, factual_claims, trade, corroborated, category/causal-relationships
aliases@van_dijk_physiology_2016, loc. 824

4 min read

Monaural temporal fine structure processing declines with age even without hearing loss.

Evidence

The monaural and binaural processing of TFS is adversely affected by both increasing age and cochlear hearing loss. The efficiency of processing monaural ENV information may be adversely affected by increasing age, but the temporal resolution of ENV cues appears to be unaffected. The processing of binaural ENV information is adversely affected by increasing age. Cochlear hearing loss does not markedly affect the processing of monaural or binaural ENV information. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 824

Füllgrabe et al. ( 2015 ) eliminated confounding effects of hearing loss by testing young (18–27 years) and older (60–79 years) subjects with matched audiograms. Both groups had audiometric thresholds ≤ 20 dB HL from 0.125 to 6 kHz. The TFS1 test was conducted using centre frequencies of 1 and 2 kHz. The older subjects performed significantly more poorly than the young subjects for both centre frequencies. Performance on the TFS1 task was not correlated with audiometric thresholds at the test frequencies. These results confirm that increased age is associated with a poorer ability to use monaural TFS cues, in the absence of any abnormality in the audiogram. It is hard to know whether this reflects a specific deficit in TFS processing or a more general reduction in processing efficiency. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 797

Moore et al. ( 2012 ) used the TFS1 test with centre frequencies of 850 and 2000 Hz to test 35 subjects with audiometric thresholds ≤ 20 dB HL from 0.25 to 6 kHz and ages from 22 to 61 years. There were significant correlations between age and the thresholds in the TFS1 test (r = 0.69 and 0.57 for the centre frequencies of 850 and 2000 Hz, respectively). However, TFS1 scores at 850 Hz were correlated with absolute thresholds at 850 Hz (r = 0.67), even though audiometric thresholds were within the normal range, making it hard to rule out an effect of hearing loss. Füllgrabe et al. ( 2015 ) eliminated confounding effects of hearing loss by testing young (18–27 years) and older (60–79 years) subjects with matched audiograms. Both groups had audiometric thresholds ≤ 20 dB HL from 0.125 to 6 kHz. The TFS1 test was conducted using centre frequencies of 1 and 2 kHz. The older subjects performed significantly more poorly than the young subjects for both centre frequencies. Performance on the TFS1 task was not correlated with audiometric thresholds at the test frequencies. These results confirm that increased age is associated with a poorer ability to use monaural TFS cues, in the absence of any abnormality in the audiogram. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 796

Füllgrabe et al. ( 2015 ) used the TFS-LF task with their young and older groups with matched (normal) audiograms, as described above. The older group performed significantly more poorly than the young group at both centre frequencies used (500 and 750 Hz). The scores on the TFS-LF test were not significantly correlated with audiometric thresholds at the test frequencies. Overall, the results indicate that the ability to detect changes in IPD worsens with increasing age even when audiometric thresholds remain within the normal range. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 804

Categorization

  • XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader interest in normal-hearing auditory physiology; also relates to other findings on age-related declines independent of audiometric loss. — connects to: Temporal-structure sensitivity declines with age even when audiograms remain normal. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 793; Binaural temporal fine structure sensitivity declines by middle age independently of hearing thresholds — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 1078; Temporal processing deficits undermine speech understanding and music appreciation — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 936 (+9 more)
  • QUESTION: What neural mechanism mediates this age-related TFS decline if not cochlear threshold loss? Retrocochlear timing jitter vs. synaptic loss?
  • corroborated: 11 independent passages support this claim — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 824; Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 797; Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 796 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

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