R01AG067791

Effects of Aging on Signal in Noise Processing - Project Summary/Abstract

Age-related hearing loss is a ubiquitous problem, estimated to affect up to one third of the population. This condition is much more detrimental than 'hard of hearing', rather, it has been implicated in a host of co-morbidities such as cognitive deficits and other mental illnesses. It remains unclear if this is a cause and effect situation or an epiphenomenon. If the former, simple interventions may well lead to much better mental health among the elderly.

The long-term goal of the proposed research program is to identify the neural coding principles that allow listeners to make sense of and focus on particular sounds (i.e. what you are listening to) when they occur mixed with other sounds (i.e. the background), something that is common in many listening situations. Although this is an extremely difficult computational problem, people with normal hearing solve it effortlessly. Unfortunately, this remarkable ability almost always declines with age, leaving individuals struggling to understand speech in noisy environments.

In order to develop assistive technologies or therapies to restore this critical function, we need to understand how the brain processes sounds in complex acoustic scenes and, in particular, exactly how it fails to do so in aged individuals. Age-related shifts in the coding strategy employed at different stages of the auditory pathway are believed to involve compensatory changes related to attenuated input from more peripheral stages, and recent research in older animals has demonstrated quantitative and qualitative changes in central neural representation of complex sounds. Crucially, these changes appear to involve changes in how information is transformed along the cortical hierarchy.

For this reason, a rigorous study of the effects of age-related hearing loss must include a comparison of cortical areas, such as core versus belt, that function at different levels of the processing hierarchy in normal hearing. Moreover, these central changes impact not only 'bottom-up' sound processing along the ascending auditory pathway but also 'top-down' modulation by attention.

The proposed studies will therefore contrast how complex sounds in challenging listening environments are processed in young versus old animals while those animals are performing perceptual tasks that either do or do not require auditory attention. These studies will be the first to track changes in how multiple complex sounds are encoded across hierarchical levels of processing in the auditory pathway in a primate model of aging, while allowing direct comparisons between cortical response changes and auditory perceptual deficits.

Davis University Of California

TO ENCOURAGE BIOMEDICAL, SOCIAL, AND BEHAVIORAL RESEARCH AND RESEARCH TRAINING DIRECTED TOWARD GREATER UNDERSTANDING OF THE AGING PROCESS AND THE DISEASES, SPECIAL PROBLEMS, AND NEEDS OF PEOPLE AS THEY AGE. THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON AGING HAS ESTABLISHED PROGRAMS TO PURSUE THESE GOALS. THE DIVISION OF AGING BIOLOGY EMPHASIZES UNDERSTANDING THE BASIC BIOLOGICAL PROCESSES OF AGING. THE DIVISION OF GERIATRICS AND CLINICAL GERONTOLOGY SUPPORTS RESEARCH TO IMPROVE THE ABILITIES OF HEALTH CARE PRACTITIONERS TO RESPOND TO THE DISEASES AND OTHER CLINICAL PROBLEMS OF OLDER PEOPLE. THE DIVISION OF BEHAVIORAL AND SOCIAL RESEARCH SUPPORTS RESEARCH THAT WILL LEAD TO GREATER UNDERSTANDING OF THE SOCIAL, CULTURAL, ECONOMIC AND PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS THAT AFFECT BOTH THE PROCESS OF GROWING OLD AND THE PLACE OF OLDER PEOPLE IN SOCIETY. THE DIVISION OF NEUROSCIENCE FOSTERS RESEARCH CONCERNED WITH THE AGE-RELATED CHANGES IN THE NERVOUS SYSTEM AS WELL AS THE RELATED SENSORY, PERCEPTUAL, AND COGNITIVE PROCESSES ASSOCIATED WITH AGING AND HAS A SPECIAL EMPHASIS ON ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE. SMALL BUSINESS INNOVATION RESEARCH (SBIR) PROGRAM: TO EXPAND AND IMPROVE THE SBIR PROGRAM, TO INCREASE PRIVATE SECTOR COMMERCIALIZATION OF INNOVATIONS DERIVED FROM FEDERAL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT, TO INCREASE SMALL BUSINESS PARTICIPATION IN FEDERAL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT, AND TO FOSTER AND ENCOURAGE PARTICIPATION OF SOCIALLY AND ECONOMICALLY DISADVANTAGED SMALL BUSINESS CONCERNS AND WOMEN-OWNED SMALL BUSINESS CONCERNS IN TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION. SMALL BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER (STTR) PROGRAM: TO STIMULATE AND FOSTER SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION THROUGH COOPERATIVE RESEARCH DEVELOPMENT CARRIED OUT BETWEEN SMALL BUSINESS CONCERNS AND RESEARCH INSTITUTIONS, TO FOSTER TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER BETWEEN SMALL BUSINESS CONCERNS AND RESEARCH INSTITUTIONS, TO INCREASE PRIVATE SECTOR COMMERCIALIZATION OF INNOVATIONS DERIVED FROM FEDERAL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT, AND TO FOSTER AND ENCOURAGE PARTICIPATION OF SOCIALLY AND ECONOMICALLY DISADVANTAGED SMALL BUSINESS CONCERNS AND WOMEN-OWNED SMALL BUSINESS CONCERNS IN TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION.

93.866 - Aging Research

National Institute on Aging (NIA) [HHS - NIH]

California United States

State-Wide

Research Project Grant (Parent R01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed) (PA-19-056)

Amendment Since initial award the total obligations have increased 506% from $516,485 to $3,128,986.