Search Abstracts | Symposia | Slide Sessions | Poster Sessions
Intrinsic oscillatory profiles predict speech comprehension in challenging listening situations
Poster Session B, Wednesday, September 30, 4:30 - 6:30 pm, Wangari Maathai
Anne Keitel1, Rosanne Timmerman2, Tanja Atanasova1; 1University of Dundee, 2Newcastle University
Individuals differ widely in their ability to understand speech under challenging listening conditions. We studied whether these differences are associated with intrinsic brain rhythms, measured via resting-state EEG. In our diverse population study (N = 400; 16 to 76 years), we analysed neural peak frequencies and amplitudes and their association with speech comprehension. Participants listened to sentences in three parametrically-manipulated speech conditions (background noise, time-compressed, interrupted) and were asked to repeat as much of the sentence as they could. The percentage of correctly identified syllables was used to assess comprehension. Our results show expected large variance between individuals in the three comprehension tasks. However, performance across all tasks was highly correlated, indicating that individuals who did well in one comprehension task tended to do well in the others too. Audiometrically assessed hearing thresholds were negatively associated with comprehension in all tasks, while cognitive ability was positively associated. Interestingly, age negatively predicted comprehension in the rapid and interrupted tasks, but not the noisy task. Analyses of intrinsic brain rhythms showed distinct topographical patterns in all frequency bands. A range of individual peak frequencies and amplitudes across all frequency bands predicted speech comprehension in task-specific patterns. For example, individual theta (4-8 Hz) amplitude predicted comprehension in the noisy task, whereas individual theta frequency predicted comprehension in the rapid task, particularly when listening was difficult. Our findings indicate that individual differences in understanding speech are associated with differences in the rhythmic make-up of the brain.
Topic Areas: Speech Perception,