Aging Effects of Neural Processing of Speech in Noise

Humans have a remarkable ability to track and understand speech in unfavorable conditions, such as in background noise, but this ability to understand speech in noise deteriorates with age. In this podcast, Editor-in-Chief Bill Yates (University of Pittsburgh), Associate Editor Conny Kopp-Schienpflug (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München), and content expert Gregg Recanzone (UC Davis) talk with authors Alessandro Presacco (University of California, Irvine), Jonathan Simon (University of Maryland), and Samira Anderson (University of Maryland) about their investigation into how aging affects midbrain and cortical encoding of speech when presented in quiet and in the presence of a single competing talker. What do the results tells us about the neural mechanisms contributing to impaired speech perception in older adults? Are there pharmacological or other interventions that could help aging-related impairments in speech processing? Listen and find out.

Evidence of degraded representation of speech in noise, in the aging midbrain and cortex
Alessandro Presacco, Jonathan Z. Simon, Samira Anderson
Journal of Neurophysiology, published online August 17, 2016. DOI: 10.1152/jn.00372.2016 .