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Effects of Asymmetries on Binaural-Hearing Abilities Across the Lifespan

NCT06953700 · Status: ENROLLING_BY_INVITATION · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 150

Last updated 2025-05-01

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

Binaural hearing involves combining auditory information across the ears. With binaural hearing, listeners benefit from perceiving sounds from different spatial locations. This is critical in solving the "cocktail party problem" (i.e., understanding speech in the presence of competing background sounds and noise). As humans get older, hearing loss increases, binaural abilities decrease, and the cocktail party problem becomes increasingly difficult. This research studies the mechanisms underlying the impact of age and hearing loss on speech-perception in noise and cocktail-party listening situations. More specifically, the role of hearing asymmetries between the ears is investigated. The specific aims are to generate an audiological and binaural-hearing-focused dataset for a large cohort of participants that vary in hearing asymmetry, age, and hearing loss and to use machine learning to uncover complex associations and generate novel hypotheses relating audiometric variables and basic binaural-hearing abilities to the cocktail-party problem. Participants in this research will complete perceptual measures of hearing acuity and spatial hearing. Participants will also report on speech understanding under noisy and challenging listening conditions. This research may lead to improvements in audiological care and hearing interventions.

Conditions

Interventions

DIAGNOSTIC_TEST

Test of hearing function

These are measurements of hearing acuity and spatial hearing.

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)

    collaborator NIH

  • University of Maryland, College Park

    lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

  • Matthew J. Goupell, PhD · University of Maryland, College Park

  • Michael P. Cummings, PhD · University of Maryland, College Park

Study Design

Allocation
NA
Purpose
BASIC_SCIENCE
Masking
NONE
Model
SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Min Age
18 Years
Max Age
80 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2024-06-17
Primary Completion
2026-05-31
Completion
2026-05-31

Countries

  • United States

Study Locations

More Related Trials

Entities

Diseases

Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT06953700 on ClinicalTrials.gov