Within- and across-frequency temporal processing and speech perception in cochlear implant users

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 17; no. 10; p. e0275772
• Main Authors: Blankenship, Chelsea M, Meinzen-Derr, Jareen, Zhang, Fawen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: San Francisco Public Library of Science 13.10.2022
• Subjects: Acoustics; Age; Amplitudes; Auditory evoked potentials; Biology and Life Sciences; Cochlea; Cochlear implants; Complications and side effects; Consonants (speech); Correlation; Ear; Ears & hearing; Evaluation; Hearing loss; Implants, Artificial; Information processing; Language; Latency; Medicine and Health Sciences; Patient outcomes; Pattern recognition; Perception; Physical Sciences; Prosthesis; Rehabilitation; Research and Analysis Methods; Social Sciences; Speech; Speech perception; Speech recognition; Stimuli; Voice recognition; United States
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0275772

Cochlear implant (CI) recipient's speech perception performance is highly variable and is influenced by temporal processing abilities. Temporal processing is commonly assessed using a behavioral task that requires the participant to detect a silent gap with the pre- and post-gap stimuli of the same frequency (within-frequency gap detection) or of different frequencies (across-frequency gap detection). The purpose of the study was to evaluate behavioral and electrophysiological measures of within- and across-frequency temporal processing and their correlations with speech perception performance in CI users. CI users had poorer speech perception scores compared to NH listeners (p 0.05). Compared to NH peers, CI users showed increased N1 latency in the CAEPs evoked by the across-frequency gap stimuli (p 0.05). Three CI ears showing the longest GDT.sub.within also showed the poorest performance in speech in noise. The within-frequency CAEP increased in amplitude with the increase of gap duration; while the across-frequency CAEP displayed a similar amplitude for all gap durations. There was a significant correlation between speech scores and within-frequency CAEP measures for the supra-threshold GDT condition, with CI users with poorer speech performance having a smaller N1-P2 amplitude and longer N1 latency. No correlations were found among GDT.sub.across, speech perception, and across-frequency CAEP measures. Within- and across-frequency gap detection may involve different neural mechanisms. The within-frequency gap detection task can help identify CI users with poor speech performance for rehabilitation. The within-frequency CAEP is a better predictor for speech perception performance than the across-frequency CAEP.