Provoking and minimising potentially destructive binaural stimulation effects in auditory steady-state response (ASSR) measurements

Authors

  • Sam David Watson Hearing Systems section, Department of Health Technology, Technical University of Denmark, DK-2800 Lyngby, Denmark
  • Søren Laugesen Interacoustics Research Unit, DK-2800 Lyngby, Denmark
  • Bastian Epp Hearing Systems section, Department of Health Technology, Technical University of Denmark, DK-2800 Lyngby, Denmark

Keywords:

ASSR, Binaural Processing, Hearing Aid Fitting, Binaural Interaction, Auditory Steady State Response, EEG Topography, Interference, Clinical Considerations

Abstract

An aided sound-field auditory steady state response (ASSR) has the potential to be used to verify the quality of fit of hearing aids on infants. Each aided ear should ideally be tested independently, but it is suspected that binaural testing may be used by clinics to reduce test time. This study simulates ‘clinically conceivable’ dichotic ASSR sound-field conditions to examine the risk of making false judgements due to unchecked binaural effects. Unaided ASSRs were recorded with a clinical two channel EEG system for 15 normally hearing subjects using a three-band CE-ChirpTM stimulus. It was found that the noise corrected power of a response harmonic can be reduced by up to 10 dB by introducing large ITDs equal to half the time period of the stimulus envelope. This could lead to concluding that a hearing aid fitting is poor, even though the fitting would have passed separate monaural ASSR tests (false referral). No effect was detected for simulated lateralisations of the stimulus, which is beneficial for a proposed aided ASSR approach. Full-scalp ASSR recordings show distinct SNR reductions and topographical changes in response to the large ITDs, and demonstrate the vulnerability of ASSR to montage and inter-subject variation. Findings suggest that multi-harmonic detectors could make binaural measurements robust to artificial reductions of response harmonics cause by large ITDs.

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Auditory Learning in Biological and Artificial Systems

Additional Files

Published

2020-04-16

How to Cite

Watson, S. D., Laugesen, S., & Epp, B. (2020). Provoking and minimising potentially destructive binaural stimulation effects in auditory steady-state response (ASSR) measurements. Proceedings of the International Symposium on Auditory and Audiological Research, 7, 469–476. Retrieved from https://proceedings.isaar.eu/index.php/isaarproc/article/view/2019-55

Issue

Vol. 7 (2019): Auditory Learning in Biological and Artificial Systems

Section

2019/5. Other topics in auditory and audiological research

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