Emotional prosody perception in presbycusis patients after auditory rehabilitation.

OBJECTIVE: Perception of emotion plays a major role in social interaction. Studies have shown that hearing loss and aging degrade emotional recognition. The main aim of the present study was to evaluate the benefit of first-time hearing aids (HA) for emotional prosody perception in presbycusis patients. Secondary objectives comprised comparison with normal-hearing subjects, and assessment of the impact of demographic and audiologic factors. METHODS: To assess HA impact, 29 subjects with presbycusis were included. They were tested without HA and 1 month after starting to use HA. A test with emotional hearing stimuli (Montreal Affective Voice test: MAV) was performed at various intensities (50, 65 and 80dB SPL). Patients' experience was evaluated on the Profile of Emotional Competence questionnaire, before and after HA fitting. Results were compared with those of 29 normal-hearing subjects. RESULTS: Auditory rehabilitation did not significantly improve MAV results (P>0.005), or subjective questionnaire results (P>0.005). Scores remained lower than those of normal-hearing subjects (P<0.001). MAV results, before and after HA, showed significant correlation with pure-tone average (r=-0.88, P<0.001) and age (r=0.44, P=0.018). The older the presbycusis patient and the more severe the hearing loss, the greater the difficulty in recognising emotional prosody. CONCLUSION: Despite hearing rehabilitation, presbycusis patients' results remained poorer than in normal-hearing subjects.

Cortical auditory responses according to hearing rehabilitation in unilateral hearing loss.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the impact of rehabilitation systems (CROS: Contralateral Routing of Signal; BAHA: Bone-Anchored Hearing Aid; CI: cochlear implant) on cortical auditory evoked potentials (CAEP) and auditory performance in unilateral hearing loss. SUBJECTS AND METHOD: Twenty-one adults with unilateral hearing loss, using CROS (n=6), BAHA (n=6) or CI (n=9), were included. Seven normal-hearing subjects served as controls. CAEPs were recorded for a (/ba/) speech stimulus; for patients, tests were conducted with and without their auditory rehabilitation. Amplitude and latency of the various CAEP components of the global field power (GFP) were measured, and scalp potential fields were mapped. Behavioral assessment used sentence recognition in noise, with and without spatial cues. RESULTS: Only CI induced N1 peak amplitude change (P<0.05). CI and CROS increased polarity inversion amplitude in the contralateral ear, and frontocentral negativity on the scalp potential map. CI improved understanding when speech was presented to the implanted ear and noise to the healthy ear, and vice-versa. CONCLUSION: Cochlear implantation had the greatest impact on CAEP morphology and auditory performance. A longitudinal study could analyze progression of cortical reorganization.

Assessment of auditory discrimination in hearing-impaired patients.

Hearing loss can impair auditory discrimination, especially in noisy environments, requiring greater listening effort, which can impact socio-occupational life. To assess the impact of hearing loss in noisy environments, clinicians may use subjective or objective methods. Subjective methods, such as speech audiometry in noise, are used in clinical practice to assess reported discomfort. Objective methods, such as cortical auditory evoked potentials (CAEPs), are mainly used in research. Subjective methods mainly comprise speech audiometry in noise, in which the signal-to-noise ratio can be varied so as to determine the individual speech recognition threshold, with and without hearing rehabilitation, the aim being to highlight any improvement in auditory performance. Frequency discrimination analysis is also possible. Objective methods assess auditory discrimination without the patient's active participation. One technique used for patients with auditory rehabilitation is the study of auditory responses by CAEPs. This electrophysiological examination studies cortical auditory rehabilitation oddball paradigms, enabling wave recordings such as mismatch negativity, P300 or N400, and analysis of neurophysiological markers according to auditory performance. The present article reviews all these methods, in order to better understand and evaluate the impact of hearing loss in everyday life.

Validation of the French-language version of the OTOSPEECH automated scoring software package for speech audiometry.

OBJECTIVES: To validate a novel speech audiometry method using customized self-voice recorded word lists with automated scoring. PATIENTS AND METHODS: The self-voice effect was investigated by comparing results with prerecorded or self-recorded CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) word lists. Then customized lists of 3-phoneme words were drawn up using the OTOSPEECH software package, and their scores were compared to those for reference lists. Finally, the customized list scores were compared on automated (Dynamic Time Warping [DTW]) versus manual scoring. RESULTS: Self-voice did not change scores for perception of CVC words at 10, 20 and 30 dB (ANOVA>0.05). Scores obtained with pre-recorded and self-recorded lists correlated (n=10, R(2)=0.76, P<0.01). Customized list scores correlated strongly with the reference cochlear lists of Lafon in normal-hearing (n=77, R(2)=0.83, P<0.001) and hearing-impaired populations (n=13, R(2)=0.89, P<0.001). Results on the automated and manual scoring methods correlated in both populations (n=77, R(2)=0.71, P<0.01; and n=13, R(2)=0.76, P<0.01, respectively), with DTW scores ranging from 24.17 to 53.24. CONCLUSIONS: Automated scoring of customized self-voice recorded lists for speech audiometry displayed results similar to conventional audiometric techniques.