Abstract
Auditory function declines with age, as evidenced by communication difficulties in challenging listening environments for older adults. Declining auditory function may arise, in part, from an age-related loss and/or inactivity of low-spontaneous-rate (SR) auditory nerve (AN) fibers, a subgroup of neurons important for suprathreshold processing. Compared to high-SR fibers, low-SR fibers take longer to recover from prior stimulation. Taking advantage of this difference, the forward-masked recovery function paradigm estimates the relative proportions of low- and high-SR fibers in the AN by quantifying the time needed for AN responses to recover from prior stimulation (ΔTrecovery). Due to the slower recovery of low-SR fibers, ANs that need more time to fully recover (longer ΔTrecovery) are estimated to have a larger proportion of low-SR fibers than ANs that need less time (shorter ΔTrecovery). To test the hypothesis that low-SR fiber activity is reduced in older humans, the current study assessed recovery functions in 32 older and 16 younger adults using the compound action potential. Results show that ΔTrecovery is shorter for older adults than for younger adults, consistent with a theorized age-related loss and/or inactivity of low-SR fibers. ΔTrecovery did not differ between individuals with and without a prior history of noise exposure as assessed by self-report. This study is the first to successfully assess forward-masked recovery functions in both younger and older adults and provides important insights into the structural and functional changes occurring in the AN with increasing age.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the participants of our study. We also thank Lilyana Kerouac and Brendan J. Balken for their assistance with data collection.
Funding
This work was supported (in part) by grants from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), R01 DC 014467, R01 DC 017619, R01 DC 000184, P50 DC 000422, and T32 DC 014435. The project also received support from the South Carolina Clinical and Translational Research (SCTR) Institute with an academic home at the Medical University of South Carolina, NIH/NCRR Grant Number UL1 RR 029882. This investigation was conducted in a facility constructed with support from Research Facilities Improvement Program Grant Number C06 RR 014516 from the National Center for Research Resources, NIH.
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McClaskey, C.M., Dias, J.W., Schmiedt, R.A. et al. Evidence for Loss of Activity in Low-Spontaneous-Rate Auditory Nerve Fibers of Older Adults. JARO 23, 273–284 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10162-021-00827-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10162-021-00827-x