NCT05330585

fNIRs, Listening Effort, and Speech Intelligibility

Functional Near-infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) as a Measure of Listening Effort and Speech Intelligibility in Adults With Hearing Loss

• Status: Unknown
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 30 (estimated)
• Sponsor: Sonova AG · Industry
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 99 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

The purpose of the current study is to measure oxygenation in the PFC using fNIRS in a sample of older adults with hearing loss. Adults with hearing loss will be asked to repeat the final word from low-context sentences in noise at two SNRs; a hard SNR (individually-measured SNR-50), and an easy SNR (SNR-50 + 10 dB) both without and with hearing aids set to a directional mode. The procedure will be a within-subject repeated measures. Stimuli will be randomized.

Detailed description

See above.

Conditions

• Hearing Loss

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
DEVICE	Hearing aids	Participants will listen to stimuli in the environment while wearing hearing aids which should make the stimuli more audible. Speech in noise performance is expected to improve and PFC oxygenation is expected to be reduced in this condition.
OTHER	Unaided	Participants will listen to stimuli in the environment with their hearing loss. Speech in noise performance is expected to decline and PFC oxygenation is expected to be increased in this condition.

Timeline

• Start date: 2022-05-03
• Primary completion: 2022-11-01
• Completion: 2022-12-01
• First posted: 2022-04-15
• Last updated: 2022-09-13

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Canada