Effects of aging on neural processing during an active listening task

Abin Kuruvilla-Mathew; Peter R Thorne; Suzanne C Purdy

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0273304

Effects of aging on neural processing during an active listening task

PLoS One. 2022 Sep 7;17(9):e0273304. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0273304. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Abin Kuruvilla-Mathew^{1

2}, Peter R Thorne^{2

3

4}, Suzanne C Purdy^{1

2

4}

Affiliations

¹ Speech Science, School of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.
² Eisdell Moore Centre, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.
³ Faculty of Medical and Health Science, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.
⁴ Brain Research New Zealand, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.

Abstract

Factors affecting successful listening in older adults and the corresponding electrophysiological signatures are not well understood. The present study investigated age-related differences in attention and temporal processing, as well as differences in the neural activity related to signal degradation during a number comparison task. Participants listened to digits presented in background babble and were tested at two levels of signal clarity, clear and degraded. Behavioral and electrophysiological measures were examined in 30 older and 20 younger neurologically-healthy adults. Relationships between performance on the number comparison task, behavioral measures, and neural activity were used to determine correlates of listening deficits associated with aging. While older participants showed poorer performance overall on all behavioral measures, their scores on the number comparison task were largely predicted (based on regression analyses) by their sensitivity to temporal fine structure cues. Compared to younger participants, older participants required higher signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) to achieve equivalent performance on the number comparison task. With increasing listening demands, age-related changes were observed in neural processing represented by the early-N1 and later-P3 time windows. Source localization analyses revealed age differences in source activity for the degraded listening condition that was located in the left prefrontal cortex. In addition, this source activity negatively correlated with task performance in the older group. Together, these results suggest that older adults exhibit reallocation of processing resources to complete a demanding listening task. However, this effect was evident only for poorer performing older adults who showed greater posterior to anterior shift in P3 response amplitudes than older adults who were good performers and younger adults. These findings might reflect less efficient recruitment of neural resources that is associated with aging during effortful listening performance.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Aged
Aging* / physiology
Attention / physiology
Auditory Perception
Humans
Speech Perception* / physiology
Task Performance and Analysis

Associated data

figshare/10.6084/m9.figshare.19161686

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the Faculty Research Development Fund, University of Auckland and the Eisdell Moore Center project grant. There was no additional external funding received for this study. The funder did not have any role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section.