Spatial Cues, Task Demands, and Auditory Selective Attention

Summary

Understanding speech in restaurants and other noisy environments is the most common complaint from the more than 60 million Americans with hearing impairment. Succeeding in such environments requires a listener to first segregate sound sources and then selectively attend to the source of interest. This study examines how individual auditory spatial cues (interaural time differences and interaural level differences) support spatial selective attention, the cortical processes that underlie this ability, and how these processes are modulated by task demands. Participants with normal hearing and participants who use bilateral cochlear implants will perform listening tasks while brain and physiological responses are recorded (electroencephalography, functional near-infrared spectroscopy, pupillometry, and, for normal-hearing participants only, functional magnetic resonance imaging). The findings will provide new insights into the mechanisms of spatial selective attention and help guide clinical solutions for cochlear implant users, individuals with hearing impairment more generally, and older normal-hearing adults who have difficulty understanding speech in noisy environments.

Conditions

• Bilateral Cochlear Implants
• Hearing Loss, Bilateral
• Healthy

Interventions

DEVICE

Existing bilateral cochlear implants

Participants in this arm are recruited from a population who have existing bilateral cochlear implants. The implants are the participants' own clinical devices, used as clinically programmed; no investigational device or modification is provided by the study. Auditory attention tasks are presented with manipulated spatial cues (interaural time differences, interaural level differences, or HRTFs).

OTHER

Normal Hearing Control

Control group recruited from the normal hearing population. Participants perform the same auditory attention tasks with manipulated spatial cues (interaural time differences, interaural level differences, or HRTFs) under EEG/fNIRS/pupillometry and fMRI.

Sponsors & Collaborators

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

  collaborator NIH

• Carnegie Mellon University

  collaborator OTHER

• University of South Florida

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Christopher A Brown, PhD · University of South Florida

Study Design

Allocation

NON_RANDOMIZED

Purpose

BASIC_SCIENCE

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Max Age

90 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2025-10-22

Primary Completion

2030-04-30

Completion

2030-07-31

Countries

• United States

Study Locations