Jonathan Z SimonApr 4, 2023
Happy to announce our #preprint “Effects of Aging on Cortical Representations of Continuous Speech” by Dushyanthi Karunathilake et al (including @StefKuchinsky) https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.08.22.504825
(A fall announcement was delayed by the rise-of-mastodon-downfall-of-twitter process)
Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), we investigated how continuous speech is represented in auditory cortex in the presence of interfering speech, in younger & older adults.
#bioRxiv #paperThread #researchPaper
1/5
Nicolas BarascudApr 4, 2023
Show threadJonathan Z Simon
Cortical representations were obtained from neural responses time-locked to the speech envelopes using *speech envelope reconstruction* and *temporal response functions* (TRFs). TRFs showed 3 prominent peaks corresponding to auditory cortical processing stages: early (~50 ms), middle (~100 ms) and late (~200 ms).
Age-based changes occur in both the timing and strength of the responses at these different cortical processing stages, and depend on both noise condition and selective attention.
2/5
Apr 4, 2023 at 3:38pmWeb
Show threadJonathan Z SimonApr 4, 2023
Critically, their dependency on noise condition changes dramatically among the early, middle, and late cortical processing stages, underscoring how aging differentially affects these stages.
3/5
Show threadJonathan Z SimonApr 4, 2023
Earlier and enhanced processing of early stages support the hypothesis of an excitatory and inhibitory imbalance in older adults. The underlying causes of enhanced processing of the middle cortical processing stage are less clear; indeed, the strongest enhancement occurs under noise conditions where the timing is neither earlier nor later than for younger adults.
4/5
Show threadJonathan Z SimonApr 4, 2023
The late auditory cortical stage displays both delayed and enhanced processing in older adults, which were associated with better performance on a parallel speech-in-noise task and thus consistent with cognitive (perhaps memory/experience based) compensatory mechanisms.
5/5