scholarly journals The effect of stimulus intensity on neural envelope tracking

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eline Verschueren ◽  
Jonas Vanthornhout ◽  
Tom Francart
Keyword(s):  
Stimulus Intensity ◽  
Speech Processing ◽  
Speech Intelligibility ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
Hearing Impaired ◽  
Response Functions ◽  
Envelope Tracking ◽  
Brain Responses ◽  
Envelope Reconstruction ◽  
Speech Tracking

ABSTRACTObjectivesThe last years there has been significant interest in attempting to recover the temporal envelope of a speech signal from the neural response to investigate neural speech processing. The research focus is now broadening from neural speech processing in normal-hearing listeners towards hearing-impaired listeners. When testing hearing-impaired listeners speech has to be amplified to resemble the effect of a hearing aid and compensate peripheral hearing loss. Until today, it is not known with certainty how or if neural speech tracking is influenced by sound amplification. As these higher intensities could influence the outcome, we investigated the influence of stimulus intensity on neural speech tracking.DesignWe recorded the electroencephalogram (EEG) of 20 normal-hearing participants while they listened to a narrated story. The story was presented at intensities from 10 to 80 dB A. To investigate the brain responses, we analyzed neural tracking of the speech envelope by reconstructing the envelope from EEG using a linear decoder and by correlating the reconstructed with the actual envelope. We investigated the delta (0.5-4 Hz) and the theta (4-8 Hz) band for each intensity. We also investigated the latencies and amplitudes of the responses in more detail using temporal response functions which are the estimated linear response functions between the stimulus envelope and the EEG.ResultsNeural envelope tracking is dependent on stimulus intensity in both the TRF and envelope reconstruction analysis. However, provided that the decoder is applied on data of the same stimulus intensity as it was trained on, envelope reconstruction is robust to stimulus intensity. In addition, neural envelope tracking in the delta (but not theta) band seems to relate to speech intelligibility. Similar to the linear decoder analysis, TRF amplitudes and latencies are dependent on stimulus intensity: The amplitude of peak 1 (30-50 ms) increases and the latency of peak 2 (140-160 ms) decreases with increasing stimulus intensity.ConclusionAlthough brain responses are influenced by stimulus intensity, neural envelope tracking is robust to stimulus intensity when using the same intensity to test and train the decoder. Therefore we can assume that intensity is not a confound when testing hearing-impaired participants with amplified speech using the linear decoder approach. In addition, neural envelope tracking in the delta band appears to be correlated with speech intelligibility, showing the potential of neural envelope tracking as an objective measure of speech intelligibility.

Second Formant Transitions of Selected Consonant-Vowel Combinations in the Speech of Deaf and Normal-Hearing Children

1976 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randall B. Monsen
Keyword(s):  
Speech Intelligibility ◽  
Normal Subjects ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
Hearing Impaired ◽  
Acoustic Cues ◽  
Target Frequency ◽  
Second Formant ◽  
Hearing Children

Although it is well known that the speech produced by the deaf is generally of low intelligibility, the sources of this low speech intelligibility have generally been ascribed either to aberrant articulation of phonemes or inappropriate prosody. This study was designed to determine to what extent a nonsegmental aspect of speech, formant transitions, may differ in the speech of the deaf and of the normal hearing. The initial second formant transitions of the vowels /i/ and /u/ after labial and alveolar consonants (/b, d, f/) were compared in the speech of six normal-hearing and six hearing-impaired adolescents. In the speech of the hearing-impaired subjects, the second formant transitions may be reduced both in time and in frequency. At its onset, the second formant may be nearer to its eventual target frequency than in the speech of the normal subjects. Since formant transitions are important acoustic cues for the adjacent consonants, reduced F 2 transitions may be an important factor in the low intelligibility of the speech of the deaf.

Intelligibility of Modified Speech for Young Listeners With Normal and Impaired Hearing

2002 ◽  
Vol 45 (5) ◽  
pp. 1027-1038 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosalie M. Uchanski ◽  
Ann E. Geers ◽  
Athanassios Protopapas
Keyword(s):  
Speech Processing ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
Hearing Impaired ◽  
Processing Conditions ◽  
Impaired Hearing ◽  
Slowing Down ◽  
Listening In Noise ◽  
Hearing Children ◽  
Impaired Children ◽  
Hearing Impaired Children

Exposure to modified speech has been shown to benefit children with languagelearning impairments with respect to their language skills (M. M. Merzenich et al., 1998; P. Tallal et al., 1996). In the study by Tallal and colleagues, the speech modification consisted of both slowing down and amplifying fast, transitional elements of speech. In this study, we examined whether the benefits of modified speech could be extended to provide intelligibility improvements for children with severe-to-profound hearing impairment who wear sensory aids. In addition, the separate effects on intelligibility of slowing down and amplifying speech were evaluated. Two groups of listeners were employed: 8 severe-to-profoundly hearingimpaired children and 5 children with normal hearing. Four speech-processing conditions were tested: (1) natural, unprocessed speech; (2) envelope-amplified speech; (3) slowed speech; and (4) both slowed and envelope-amplified speech. For each condition, three types of speech materials were used: words in sentences, isolated words, and syllable contrasts. To degrade the performance of the normal-hearing children, all testing was completed with a noise background. Results from the hearing-impaired children showed that all varieties of modified speech yielded either equivalent or poorer intelligibility than unprocessed speech. For words in sentences and isolated words, the slowing-down of speech had no effect on intelligibility scores whereas envelope amplification, both alone and combined with slowing-down, yielded significantly lower scores. Intelligibility results from normal-hearing children listening in noise were somewhat similar to those from hearing-impaired children. For isolated words, the slowing-down of speech had no effect on intelligibility whereas envelope amplification degraded intelligibility. For both subject groups, speech processing had no statistically significant effect on syllable discrimination. In summary, without extensive exposure to the speech processing conditions, children with impaired hearing and children with normal hearing listening in noise received no intelligibility advantage from either slowed speech or envelope-amplified speech.

scholarly journals Duration measurement of vocants in infants with Cochlear Implants

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paris Binos
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Cochlear Implants ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Speech Intelligibility ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
Hearing Impaired ◽  
Prosodic Feature ◽  
Verbal Skills ◽  
Young Infants

Vocants are precursors to speech and are facially neutral. The presence of these speechlike vocalizations was evident during the precursors to mature phonology called “protophones”. The prosodic feature of duration of the nuclei plays a crucial role in the shift of prelexical to mature speech, since speech intelligibility is closely related to the control of duration. The aim of this work is to determine whether cochlear implants (CIs) positively trigger language acquisition and the development of verbal skills. Recent literature findings are compared and discussed with the performance of two Greek congenitally hearing-impaired infants who were matched with three normal-hearing (NH) infants. This work highlighted an important weakness of the prosodic abilities of young infants with CIs.

Amplitude modulation discrimination interference (MDI) and speech intelligibility for normal‐hearing and hearing‐impaired subjects

1999 ◽  
Vol 105 (2) ◽  
pp. 967-967
Author(s):  
Jan Koopman ◽  
Rene van der Horst ◽  
Wouter A. Dreschler
Keyword(s):  
Amplitude Modulation ◽  
Speech Intelligibility ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
Hearing Impaired

scholarly journals Hearing loss is associated with delayed neural responses to continuous speech

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marlies Gillis ◽  
Lien Decruy ◽  
Jonas Vanthornhout ◽  
Tom Francart
Keyword(s):  
Hearing Loss ◽  
Speech Processing ◽  
Noise Level ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
Hearing Impaired ◽  
Neural Responses ◽  
Continuous Speech ◽  
Processing Efficiency ◽  
Sound Amplification ◽  
The Impact

AbstractWe investigated the impact of hearing loss on the neural processing of speech. Using a forward modelling approach, we compared the neural responses to continuous speech of 14 adults with sensorineural hearing loss with those of age-matched normal-hearing peers.Compared to their normal-hearing peers, hearing-impaired listeners had increased neural tracking and delayed neural responses to continuous speech in quiet. The latency also increased with the degree of hearing loss. As speech understanding decreased, neural tracking decreased in both population; however, a significantly different trend was observed for the latency of the neural responses. For normal-hearing listeners, the latency increased with increasing background noise level. However, for hearing-impaired listeners, this increase was not observed.Our results support that the neural response latency indicates the efficiency of neural speech processing. Hearing-impaired listeners process speech in silence less efficiently then normal-hearing listeners. Our results suggest that this reduction in neural speech processing efficiency is a gradual effect which occurs as hearing deteriorates. Moreover, the efficiency of neural speech processing in hearing-impaired listeners is already at its lowest level when listening to speech in quiet, while normal-hearing listeners show a further decrease in efficiently when the noise level increases.From our results, it is apparent that sound amplification does not solve hearing loss. Even when intelligibility is apparently perfect, hearing-impaired listeners process speech less efficiently.

Identification of the spectrotemporal modulations that support speech intelligibility in hearing-impaired and normal-hearing listeners

2017 ◽  
Vol 141 (5) ◽  
pp. 3837-3837
Author(s):  
Jonathan Venezia ◽  
Allison-Graham Martin ◽  
Virginia Richards
Keyword(s):  
Speech Intelligibility ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
Hearing Impaired
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