Abstract
Age-related decline in speech perception may result in difficulties partaking in spoken conversation and potentially lead to social isolation and cognitive decline in older adults. It is therefore important to better understand how age-related differences in neurostructural factors such as cortical thickness (CT) and surface area (CSA) are related to neurophysiological sensitivity to speech cues in younger and older adults.
Age-related differences in CT and CSA of bilateral auditory-related areas were extracted using FreeSurfer in younger and older adults with normal peripheral hearing. Behavioral and neurophysiological sensitivity to prosodic speech cues (word stress and fundamental frequency of oscillation) were evaluated using discrimination tasks and a passive oddball paradigm, while EEG was recorded, to quantify mismatch negativity (MMN) responses.
Giroud, Nathalie