Investigation of Anatomical Correlates of Speech Discrimination

Steward St. Elizabeth's Medical Center of Boston, Inc.

Status: Enrolling

Conditions: Sensorineural Hearing Loss

Treatments: Device: Hearing Aid fitting

Study type: Observational

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT01781039

00652

Details and patient eligibility

About

Understanding speech is essential for good communication. Individuals with hearing loss and poor speech discrimination often have little success with hearing aids because amplifying sound improves audibility, but not clarity of the speech signal. The purpose of this study is to determine the relative importance of the sensory cells of the inner ear and auditory neurons on speech discrimination performance in quiet and in noise. This information may be used as a predictor of hearing aid benefit. The investigators expect to find decreased speech understanding ability resulting from both loss of sensory cells and the loss of auditory neurons.

Enrollment: 1,652 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 100 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Normal hearing to moderate sensorineural hearing loss
• Sufficient English proficiency to complete speech discrimination testing in English

Exclusion criteria

• Hearing loss less than a 45 dB HL pure tone average (average hearing thresholds at 500, 1000 and 2000 Hz)
• Conductive hearing loss
• Neurodegenerative disease

Trial design

1,652 participants in 7 patient groups

low HIN difficulty- anesthetized

Description:

Subjects with normal OHC function and who will be undergoing an previously scheduled anesthetized procedure will be assigned into 2 groups based on their self-perceived HIN difficulty (high and low difficulty), and then undergo a test battery consisting of auditory threshold tests, objective HIN assays, OHC measurements, cognitive processing, and central auditory processing evaluations. Immediately after anesthetization, electrocochleography (ECochG) will be used to measure CAP amplitudes, which will be correlated with measurements obtained from unanesthetized subjects as described below. This aim will determine the optimal CAP recording method with the strongest correlation with HIN performance in humans

high HIN difficulty- anesthetized

Description:

Subjects with normal OHC function and who will be undergoing an previously scheduled anesthetized procedure will be assigned into 2 groups based on their self-perceived HIN difficulty (high and low difficulty), and then undergo a test battery consisting of auditory threshold tests, objective HIN assays, OHC measurements, cognitive processing, and central auditory processing evaluations. Immediately after anesthetization, electrocochleography (ECochG) will be used to measure CAP amplitudes, which will be correlated with measurements obtained from unanesthetized subjects as described below. This aim will determine the optimal CAP recording method with the strongest correlation with HIN performance in humans

Hearing Aid fitting: MAD

Description:

Microphone adaptive directionality (MAD) feature will be activated, the WDC set to linear, and the DNR minimized

Treatment:

Device: Hearing Aid fitting

Hearing Aid fitting: WDC

Description:

Wide dynamic compression (WDC) feature will be set to target levels, the MAD feature set to omnidirectional, and the DNR minimized.

Treatment:

Device: Hearing Aid fitting

Hearing Aid fitting: DNR

Description:

Digital noise reduction (DNR) set to maximum, MAD set to omnidirectional, and WDC set to linear

Treatment:

Device: Hearing Aid fitting

Hearing Aid fitting: Positive control

Description:

All hearing aid features enables

Treatment:

Device: Hearing Aid fitting

Hearing Aid fitting: Negative control

Description:

All hearing aid features disabled

Treatment:

Device: Hearing Aid fitting