Age-related changes of auditory brainstem responses in nonhuman primates.

Nonhuman primates, compared with humans and rodents, have historically been far less used for studies of age-related hearing loss, primarily because of their long life span and high cost of maintenance. Strong similarities in genetics, anatomy, and neurophysiology of the auditory nervous system between humans and monkeys, however, could provide fruitful opportunities to enhance our understanding of hearing loss. The present study used a common, noninvasive technique for testing hearing sensitivity in humans, the auditory brainstem response (ABR), to assess the hearing of 48 rhesus macaques from 6 to 35 yr of age to clicks and tone stimuli between 0.5 and 16.0 kHz. Old monkeys, particularly those above 21.5 yr of age, had missing ABR waveforms at high frequencies. Regression analyses revealed that ABR threshold increased as a function of age at peaks II and IV simultaneously. In the suprathreshold hearing condition (70 dB peak sound pressure level), ABR-based audiograms similarly varied as a function of age such that old monkeys had smaller peak amplitudes and delayed latencies at low, middle, and high frequencies. Peripheral hearing differences remained a major influence associated with age-related changes in audiometric functions of old monkeys at a comparable sensation level across animals. The present findings suggest that hearing loss occurs in old monkeys across a wide range of frequencies and that these deficits increase in severity with age. Parallel to prior studies in monkeys, we found weak effects of sex on hearing, and future investigations are necessary to clarify its role in age-related hearing loss.

Hierarchical and serial processing in the spatial auditory cortical pathway is degraded by natural aging.

The compromised abilities to localize sounds and to understand speech are two hallmark deficits in aged individuals. The auditory cortex is necessary for these processes, yet we know little about how normal aging affects these early cortical fields. In this study, we recorded the spatial tuning of single neurons in primary (auditory cortex, A1) and secondary (caudolateral field, CL) auditory cortical areas in young and aged alert rhesus macaques. We found that the neurons of aged animals had greater spontaneous and driven activity, and broader spatial tuning compared with those of younger animals. Importantly, spatial tuning was not sharpened between A1 and CL in aged monkeys as it is in younger monkeys. This implies that a major effect of normal aging is a degradation of the hierarchical processing between serially connected cortical areas, which could be a key contributing mechanism of the general cognitive decline that is commonly observed in normal aging.