Neural processing of speech comprehension in noise predicts individual age using fNIRS-based brain-behavior models

Abstract Speech comprehension in noise depends on complex interactions between peripheral sensory and central cognitive systems. Despite having normal peripheral hearing, older adults show difficulties in speech comprehension. It remains unclear whether the brain’s neural responses could indicate ag...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. 1991) N.Y. 1991), 2024-05, Vol.34 (5)
Main Authors: Liu, Yi, Wang, Songjian, Lu, Jing, Ding, Junhua, Chen, Younuo, Yang, Liu, Wang, Shuo
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acoustic Stimulation - methods
Adult
Aged
Aging - physiology
Brain - diagnostic imaging
Brain - physiology
Brain Mapping - methods
Comprehension - physiology
Female
Humans
Male
Middle Aged
Noise
Spectroscopy, Near-Infrared - methods
Speech Perception - physiology
Young Adult
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Summary:Abstract Speech comprehension in noise depends on complex interactions between peripheral sensory and central cognitive systems. Despite having normal peripheral hearing, older adults show difficulties in speech comprehension. It remains unclear whether the brain’s neural responses could indicate aging. The current study examined whether individual brain activation during speech perception in different listening environments could predict age. We applied functional near-infrared spectroscopy to 93 normal-hearing human adults (20 to 70 years old) during a sentence listening task, which contained a quiet condition and 4 different signal-to-noise ratios (SNR = 10, 5, 0, −5 dB) noisy conditions. A data-driven approach, the region-based brain-age predictive modeling was adopted. We observed a significant behavioral decrease with age under the 4 noisy conditions, but not under the quiet condition. Brain activations in SNR = 10 dB listening condition could successfully predict individual’s age. Moreover, we found that the bilateral visual sensory cortex, left dorsal speech pathway, left cerebellum, right temporal–parietal junction area, right homolog Wernicke’s area, and right middle temporal gyrus contributed most to prediction performance. These results demonstrate that the activations of regions about sensory-motor mapping of sound, especially in noisy conditions, could be sensitive measures for age prediction than external behavior measures.
ISSN:1047-3211
1460-2199
DOI:10.1093/cercor/bhae178