Modeling auditory evoked brainstem responses to speech syllables. Can variations in cochlear tuning explain argued brainstem plasticity?
Abstract
Hornickel et al. (2009) and Skoe et al. (2011) measured and analyzed brainstem responses (ABRs) in response to the synthetic syllables /ba/, /da/ and /ga/, in normal and learning-impaired children. They reported a co-variation between the differences in average phase lag between the three syllable-evoked responses (called average phase-shifts), and speech-intelligibility performance (used as a predictor for learning-impairment). It was argued that, due to the reported normal peripheral hearing of both groups, the co-variation was evidence for neural differences in the brainstem, likely related to brainstem plasticity. They suggested brainstem functionality can be influenced by cortical structures to increase the difference between syllable responses. This study developed an ABR model capable of simulating ABRs to a variety of stimuli. The model was used to investigate whether the state of the peripheral hearing could be another possible explanation for the decreased average phase shifts observed for the learning-impaired children. Specifically, by changing the cochlear tuning of the model and evaluating the simulations based on models with broad versus sharp tuning (yet keeping all tuning estimates within normal audiometrical and wave-V latency range), it was observed that broader tuning systematically lead to smaller phase-shifts between the syllable-evoked ABRs.
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