Brainstem encoding of frequency-modulated sweeps is relevant to Mandarin concurrent-vowels identification for normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners

Fu, Zhen1; Yang, Hongying1; Chen, Fei2; Wu, Xihong1; Chen, Jing1

2019-09

10.1016/j.heares.2019.06.005

HEARING RESEARCH   影响因子和分区

0378-5955

1878-5891

F0 contours convey the primary information of lexical Tones for Mandarin Chinese, and the processing of time-varying F0 contours is important for Mandarin concurrent-vowels identification (MCVI). In this work, we examined the relationship between frequency modulation (FM) detection of auditory system and MCVI in both normal-hearing (NH) and hearing-impaired (HI) listeners. Three experiments were conducted with the same subjects to measure their MCVI, FM detection limen (FMDL), and frequency following responses (FFRs) evoked by FM sweeps, respectively. To ensure that F0 contour was the primary cue utilized, mean F0s and durations were equalized among all test vowels in the MCVI experiment. To simulate the pattern of F0 contours of Mandarin vowels, linearly FM sweeps were used as stimuli in the FMDL and FFRs experiments. The results confirmed that the performance of HI listeners was significantly worse than that of NH listeners in all of the three measurements. Besides, FFRs evoked by FM sweeps had significantly lower tracking accuracy than those evoked by steady tones only for HI listeners. The correlation analysis further revealed that any two of the three measured indices were significantly correlated when the effects of age and absolute threshold were partialed out (vertical bar r vertical bar >= 0.502, p <= 0.017). These results suggested an association between the poor performance of HI listeners in the MCVI task and their degraded auditory function on FM detection, and such a behavioral degradation has emerged in the phase-locking activity at the brainstem level. (C) 2019 Published by Elsevier B.V.

Concurrent-vowels identification Frequency modulation detection Frequency-following responses Hearing impairment

SCI ; SSCI

英语

其他

Medicine-Information research grant by Peking University[BMU2018MI004]

Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology ; Neurosciences & Neurology ; Otorhinolaryngology

Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology ; Neurosciences ; Otorhinolaryngology

WOS:000482246000011

ELSEVIER

CLINICAL MEDICINE

Web of Science

1.Peking Univ, Dept Machine Intelligence, Speech & Hearing Res Ctr, Key Lab Machine Percept,Minist Educ, Beijing 100871, Peoples R China
2.Southern Univ Sci & Technol, Dept Elect & Elect Engn, 1088 Xueyuan Blvd, Shenzhen 518055, Peoples R China

Fu, Zhen,Yang, Hongying,Chen, Fei,et al. Brainstem encoding of frequency-modulated sweeps is relevant to Mandarin concurrent-vowels identification for normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners[J]. HEARING RESEARCH,2019,380:123-136.

Fu, Zhen,Yang, Hongying,Chen, Fei,Wu, Xihong,&Chen, Jing.(2019).Brainstem encoding of frequency-modulated sweeps is relevant to Mandarin concurrent-vowels identification for normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners.HEARING RESEARCH,380,123-136.

Fu, Zhen,et al."Brainstem encoding of frequency-modulated sweeps is relevant to Mandarin concurrent-vowels identification for normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners".HEARING RESEARCH 380(2019):123-136.