Abstract
Older adults with hearing loss often must work harder to understand speech compared to younger, normal-hearing individuals. Degraded auditory signals, sensorineural hearing loss, and age-related central nervous system declines can make listening in noise particularly effortful with increasing age. Neuroimaging studies have enhanced the understanding of the sensory, linguistic, and cognitive mechanisms that underlie speech recognition in difficult conditions and how these mechanisms change with age and hearing loss. This chapter provides an overview of neuroimaging research that has informed the current understanding of age-related changes in listening effort. In particular, this literature has revealed that older adults tend to engage more widespread activity across brain regions that support communication, such as attention and working memory. Thus, trying to understand degraded speech signals appears to increase listening-related effort and limit the mental resources available for other daily life activities. The significance of this research for clinical populations is discussed, including how neuroimaging could inform the development of targeted interventions and assessments of listening effort.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported in part by grants from the National Institutes of Health National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders R03 DC15059 (SEK) and National Institutes of Health National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders P50 DC 000422 (KIV).
The views expressed in this chapter are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy of the Department of Army/Navy/Air Force, Department of Defense, or U.S. Government.
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Stefanie E. Kuchinsky declares that she has no conflict of interest.
Kenneth I. Vaden Jr. declares that he has no conflict of interest.
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Kuchinsky, S.E., Vaden, K.I. (2020). Aging, Hearing Loss, and Listening Effort: Imaging Studies of the Aging Listener. In: Helfer, K.S., Bartlett, E.L., Popper, A.N., Fay, R.R. (eds) Aging and Hearing. Springer Handbook of Auditory Research, vol 72. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49367-7_10
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