ABSTRACT:

Hearing loss is often thought of as a loss in peripheral hearing sensitivity, brought about by degradation in the cochlear active mechanism. However, reduction in active cochlear function also causes other changes, such as loss in auditory frequency selectivity and decline in medial olivary efferent function. Furthermore, hearing loss can cause maladaptive changes in central auditory processing, which might lead to tinnitus and associated problems. Certain forms of hearing impairment might even be caused centrally. Older listeners, for instance, often find it hard to understand speech in noisy environments, even though their peripheral hearing function might be quite normal. Age-related impairments might be caused by degradation in fine-grain temporal processing at sub-cortical levels, or in higher-level processes underlying auditory short-term memory and attentional selection. In this talk, I will describe our work in trying to develop tools, based on non-invasive neuro-recording and perceptual techniques, for investigating the neural processes underlying these effects.

Read more at Dr. Krumbholz’s webpage:

http://www.ihr.mrc.ac.uk/staff/view/6

ALL ARE WELCOME.