The effects of aging on peripheral hearing function are well known, and age-related hearing loss (presbycusis) is common among those over 60. audiologist during a typical hearing evaluation considers whether test results conform to expectations for a presbycusis hearing loss, which is a gradually sloping hearing loss in the high frequencies. What we may fail to consider, however, are the effect...

Hearing loss is a common feature in human aging. It has been argued that dysfunctions in central processing are important contributing factors to hearing loss during older age. Aging also has well documented consequences for neural structure and function, but it is not clear how these effects interact with those that arise as a consequence of hearing loss. This paper reviews the effects of agin...

Hearing loss is one of the most common complaints in adults over the age of 60 and a major contributor to difficulties in speech comprehension. To examine the effects of hearing ability on the neural processes supporting spoken language processing in humans, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to monitor brain activity while older adults with age-normal hearing listened to sentences t...

C57BL/6J (C57) mice were used to examine relationships between the behavioral acoustic startle response (ASR) and the responses of neurons in the caudal pontine reticular formation (PnC) in three contexts: 1) responses evoked by basic startle stimuli; 2) the prepulse inhibition (PPI) paradigm; and 3) the effects of high-frequency hearing loss and concomitant neural plasticity that occurs in mid...

Although extensive research on neural plasticity resulting from hearing deprivation has been conducted, the direct influence of compromised audition on the auditory cortex and the potential impact of long durations of incomplete sensory stimulation on the adult cortex are still not fully understood. In this study, using voxel-based morphometry, we evaluated gray matter (GM) volume changes that ...

Objective. This study examined the patterns of neural activity in the central auditory system in children with hearing loss. Methods. Cortical potentials and mismatch responses (MMRs) were recorded from ten children aged between 9 and 10 years: five with hearing loss and five with normal hearing in passive oddball paradigms using verbal and nonverbal stimuli. Results. Results indicate a trend t...

Aging is often accompanied by hearing loss, which impacts how sounds are processed and represented along the ascending auditory pathways and within the auditory cortices. Here, we assess the impact of mild binaural hearing loss on the older adults' ability to both process complex sounds embedded in noise and to segregate a mistuned harmonic in an otherwise periodic stimulus. We measured auditor...