Neural and Behavioral Changes in Older Adults from Auditory-Cognitive Training

Speech perception in noisy environments is a common challenge among older adults, even for those with clinically normal hearing. Cognitive decline may be one of the contributing factors, and, as such, auditory-cognitive training may enhance speech perception in these conditions. This study aims to determine if auditory-cognitive training can improve speech-in-noise listening in normal-hearing, older adults using neural and behavioral measures, supplemented with comparisons across younger and older adults. Neural responses were obtained using magnetoencephalography (MEG) while participants listened to long, narrative passages (60 s) under four noise conditions. Neural measures employed reverse correlation using encoding and decoding models, via the temporal response function (TRF) framework, to predict neural responses and reconstruct stimulus features, respectively, with the boosting algorithm to enforce sparsity. Behavioral measures, such as working memory (reading span; RSPAN), speech perception in noise (SPIN), and nonlinguistic auditory stream segregation (stochastic figure-ground; SFG) showed improvement post-training, along with neural and subjective ratings for listening effort. Additionally, auditory-cognitive training may enhance the neural contrast between the selectively attended and unattended stimulus reconstructions, and pre-training SFG performance may predict the extent of this neuroplasticity change. These results provide promising, additional insight into the effects of auditory-cognitive training, both perceptually and neurally.