Search Abstracts | Symposia | Slide Sessions | Poster Sessions
Beta-band phase synchrony between control and auditory-temporal cortex during competing speech relates to everyday listening in adolescents with and without listening difficulty
Poster Session C, Thursday, October 1, 10:45 am - 12:45 pm, Wangari Maathai
Katsuaki Kojima1,2, Maria Barnes-Davis1,2, Chelsea Blankenship1,2, Lina Motlagh Zadeh2, Beula Magimairaj1,2, Jennifer Vannest2, Lisa Hunter1,2, David Moore1,2; 1Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, 2University of Cincinnati
Listening difficulty (LiD) is characterized by challenges in understanding speech in real-world noisy environments despite clinically normal hearing. In a cohort of adolescents with and without caregiver-reported LiD, we have shown reduced theta-band neural tracking of attended speech, particularly in an ecologically rich competing-speech condition incorporating both spatial and talker cues. Using the same cohort, we now ask whether everyday listening in competing speech also depends on how effectively executive-control regions in frontal and parietal cortex coordinate with auditory-temporal speech regions. Forty-six adolescents (21 LiD, 25 typically developing [TD]; 11–19 years) with clinically normal audiograms underwent magnetoencephalography (MEG) while listening to five 5-minute stories: clear speech and four competing-speech conditions crossing spatial and talker (dual) cues. Source activity was reconstructed to 68 cortical regions (Desikan–Killiany atlas). Phase-based connectivity was quantified as debiased weighted phase lag index (dwPLI) in theta, alpha, beta, and low-gamma bands; amplitude-envelope correlation (AEC) was included as a secondary metric. The primary measure was beta-band control–auditory network strength (SCA), defined as mean dwPLI between frontal/parietal/cingulate control regions and auditory-temporal regions. Primary analyses tested whether beta-band SCA predicted caregiver-reported everyday listening (Evaluation of Children’s Listening and Processing Skills [ECLiPS]) in the dual-cue condition and whether it varied across conditions or with talker-cue availability. Secondary analyses examined edge-level localization, hemispheric specificity, and relations to neural speech tracking. In the dual-cue condition, stronger beta-band SCA predicted better ECLiPS scores after adjustment for group and covariates (Holm-corrected p = .028, partial R² = .158), indicating continuous individual differences beyond categorical group separation. Network-Based Statistic localized this association to a 14-edge fronto-parietal-temporal subnetwork (family-wise-error-corrected p = .030), with left pars opercularis as the most prominent hub. The effect was condition-specific: slopes were positive across conditions, but only the dual-cue condition survived correction. Mean beta-band SCA did not differ reliably between clear and competing speech, was not significantly modulated by talker cues, and showed no reliable LiD–TD difference, suggesting that beta control–auditory coordination is better understood as a continuous phenotype than a categorical group effect. Secondary phase-based analyses converged on left-lateralized involvement; left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG)–auditory coupling showed a stronger association with ECLiPS than the right-hemisphere analogue, and beta-band SCA in the no-cue condition was associated with neural speech tracking. AEC analyses yielded no significant primary effects, though orthogonalized beta-band SCA in the no-cue condition predicted speech tracking (pFDR = .027, partial R² = .146), supporting a limited secondary amplitude-based contribution. These findings suggest that everyday listening ability in adolescence depends not only on faithful cortical representation of attended speech, but also on beta-band coordination between left-lateralized executive-control and auditory-temporal networks. Listening difficulties may reflect reduced efficiency in recruiting this top-down modulatory network under demanding conditions rather than a gross loss of mean connectivity. Together with our prior speech-tracking findings, the present results point to a left IFG-centered attentional-control mechanism linked to everyday listening across adolescents with and without LiD.
Topic Areas: Disorders: Acquired, Control, Selection, and Executive Processes