ArticleeLife2025
Increased listening effort and cochlear neural degeneration underlie speech-in-noise deficits in normal-hearing middle-aged adults.
Article in eLife, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed.
- Distinct Roles of Working Memory and Inhibitory Control in Speech-in-Noise Perception.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Wireless, skin-interfaced multimodal sensing system for continuous psychophysiological monitoring-A wearable polygraph device.Science advances · 2026Article
- Neural Hearing Loss: Mechanisms, Diagnosis and Treatment Horizons.Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology : JARO · 2026Review
- Age-related differences in asymmetric synapses across the central inferior colliculus in the Fischer Brown Norway rat.Aging brain · 2026Article
- Blast-Induced Auditory Injury: From Peripheral Pathology to Central Neurodegeneration.Iranian journal of otorhinolaryngology · 2026Review
- Influence of age on speech-in-noise and spatial processing abilities in middle-aged adults.PloS one · 2026Article
- Review
- Ultrastructural Synaptic Differences in the Central Inferior Colliculus in the 3xTG Mouse Across Three Disease Stages.The Journal of comparative neurology · 2025Article
- Degraded neural coding of temporal fine structure with age predicts effortful listening in multi-talker environments.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Neural Coding of Fundamental Frequency and Processing of Discrete Pitch Accents in Middle Age.The European journal of neuroscience · 2025Article
- Age-related differences in GABAergic synapses across the central inferior colliculus in the Fischer Brown Norway rat.Neurobiology of aging · 2025Article
- Article
- Age-Related Decline in Neural Phase-Locking to Envelope and Temporal Fine Structure Revealed by Frequency Following Responses: A Potential Signature of Cochlear Synaptopathy Impairing Speech Intelligibility.Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology : JARO · 2025Article
- Sound Advice: A Consumer's Perspective on Navigating the World of Over-the-Counter Hearing Aids.Seminars in hearing · 2025Review
- Speech sound discrimination in background noise across the lifespan: a comparative study in Mongolian gerbils and humans.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2025Article
- Modeling the impact of cochlear nerve degeneration on speech recognition performance.PloS one · 2025Article
- Reduced Neural Distinctiveness of Speech Representations in the Middle-Aged Brain.Neurobiology of language (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Unravelling hidden hearing loss.eLife · 2024Article
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11 authors.
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Abstract
Middle age represents a critical period of accelerated brain changes and provides a window for early detection and intervention in age-related neurological decline. Hearing loss is a key early marker of such decline and is linked to numerous comorbidities in older adults. Yet, ~10% of middle-aged individuals who report hearing difficulties show normal audiograms. Cochlear neural degeneration (CND) could contribute to these hidden hearing deficits, though its role remains unclear due to a lack of objective diagnostics and uncertainty regarding its perceptual outcomes. Here, we employed a cross-species design to examine neural and behavioral signatures of CND. We measured envelope following responses (EFRs) - neural ensemble responses to sound originating from the peripheral auditory pathway - in young and middle-aged adults with normal audiograms and compared these responses to young and middle-aged Mongolian gerbils, where CND was histologically confirmed. We observed near-identical changes in EFRs across species that were associated with CND. Behavioral assessments revealed age-related speech-in-noise deficits under challenging conditions, while pupil-indexed listening effort increased with age even when behavioral performance was matched. Together, these results demonstrate that CND contributes to speech perception difficulties and elevated listening effort in midlife, which may ultimately lead to listening fatigue and social withdrawal.
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