View clinical trials related to Auditory Perception.
Filter by:The COMPRESSED project is a descriptive, bi-centric and non-invasive study carried out by the CERIAH - IDA - Institut Pasteur and the Haute École Léonard de Vinci in Brussels on volunteer participants identified in two groups : - be subject to high exposure to compressed sound, as defined by professional participation in events on broadcast platforms using sound signal processing systems, over the last 3 years, - be subject to moderate or limited exposure to compressed and manipulated sound, equivalent to that of a student following certain distance learning courses. on a videoconferencing platform, alternating with other face-to-face courses, with the ability to listen during breaks, which have been taught for a maximum of 2 years. The main objective of the COMPRESSED study is to evaluate the auditory effects of exposure to manipulated sounds (compression, filtering, equalisation, accentuation, etc.) from sound distribution platforms on the auditory system of participants who are regularly exposed to these sounds as a result of their professional activity.
The objective of this study is to identify the influence of positive and negative auditory cues, music and a placebo (silence) on mood and gait during 30 minutes of free walking. Participants will be required to walk for a total of 30 minutes with mood being measured every 5 minutes and gait measured throughout the 30 minute protocol.
This study will measure the performance of three personal amplification devices when used by middle-aged adults. Speech understanding will be assessed with two different types of background noises at three different input levels.
Hearing loss has been associated with decreased emotional wellbeing and reduced quality of life in aging adults. Although hearing aids can target aspects of peripheral hearing loss, persistent perceptual deficits are widely reported. One prevalent example is the loss of the ability to perceive speech in a noisy environment, which severely impacts quality of life and goes relatively unremediated by hearing aids. Musicianship has been shown to improve aspects of auditory processing, but has not been studied as a short-term intervention for improving these abilities in older adults with hearing aids. The current study investigates whether short-term choir participation can improve three aspects of auditory processing: perception of speech in noise, pitch discrimination, and the neural response to brief auditory stimuli (frequency following response; FFR). Sixty hearing aided older adults (aged 50+) recruited from the Greater Toronto Area will be randomly assigned to one of three conditions: a choir singing class (n=20), a music appreciation class (n=20), and a do-nothing control group (n=20). Choir participants will take part in a singing class for 14 weeks, during which they will take part in group singing (2 hours/week) supported by individual online musical training (1 hour/week). Participants will undergo pre- and post-training assessments, conducted during the first week of the choir class and again after the last week. Participants in the music appreciation class will be involved in 14 weeks of music listening classes, and the do-nothing control group will not engaged in an active intervention. All participants will undergo the same battery of assessments, measured before and after the 14-week time frame. Auditory assessments (speech perception in noise and pitch discrimination tests) will be administered electronically, and the FFR will be obtained using electroencephalography (EEG). Each of the four assessment sessions (two pre-training, two post-training) will last approximately 1.5 hours, for a total of 6 hours of data collection. The goal of this research is to investigate whether short-term musical training will result in improved auditory outcomes for older adults with hearing aids. It is predicted that the choir singing group will demonstrate the greatest improvements across all auditory measures, and that both the choir singing and musical appreciation groups will experience greater improvements than the do-nothing control group.
- The perioperative period can be a significant source of psychological burden, anxiety and fear for patients - Both pharmacological and non-pharmacological methods have been proposed in order to alleviate perioperative stress - Music is one of the non-pharmacological methods which have been used in this context, with favorable effects both preoperatively and postoperatively - The attenuation of perioperative stress through music listening is probably due to the activation of emotional and cognitive processes that evoke feeling of pleasure and can distract patients' attention from fear and unpleasant thoughts related to the surgical procedure - Little information is available regarding the effect of intraoperative music listening on anesthetized, unconscious patients - There is a notion that general anesthesia does not completely abolish auditory perception and that some processing of intraoperative events can occur in unconscious patients, even in the absence of postoperative recall - The investigators hypothesis is that intraoperative music listening can decrease anesthetic requirements and reduce sevoflurane consumption in female patients subjected to abdominal hysterectomy for benign disease.
Study Objectives: - 1. To examine the extent to which noise typical of nursing units reduces speech intelligibility in acutely ill hospitalized patients - 2. To examine the extent to which noise typical of nursing units impairs recall in acutely ill hospitalized patients - 3. To quantify severity of reduced performance associated with age, familiarity with the healthcare setting, hearing and health status. Plan: One hundred and twenty inpatients from the four medical/surgical nursing units at the Portland VA Medical Center, 60 with normal hearing and 60 with hearing impairment will be recruited to participate in the study. Following assessment to ascertain eligibility and obtaining informed consent, patients will be tested in a sound booth housed at the National Center for Rehabilitative Auditory Research (NCRAR). Designed so that each patient serves as his or her own control, we can accommodate considerable baseline variability between patients without adversely affecting required sample size. Patients' performance in speech intelligibility and recall tests will be measured using a constant level of speech, in controlled environments of no noise (baseline), white noise, hospital noise and hospital noise with speech, all delivered via headphones in pseudo-random order. Performance will be measured in each type of noise at decibel levels equivalent to those currently experienced on nursing units and at lower levels that prior studies have shown are more conducive to effective communication By selecting measures that are particularly relevant to the safe care of hospitalized patients, and that have been studied extensively in healthy populations in highly controlled conditions, we expect to find compelling and unambiguous evidence that hospitalized patients correctly hear and recall very little of what is said to them during their hospitalizations. The majority of hospitalized patients stay on acute care nursing units during most or all of their hospitalizations, making this an appropriate population to study in the context of their responses to the noises typical in these environments. Perhaps most importantly, this study will heighten awareness of health-care personnel to the levels of impairment suffered by their patients - both in their ability to correctly interpret speech and to recall it - in the typical noisy environments of nursing units.
The aim of this study was to establish parameters for the Gaps-in-Noise test in normal-hearing young adults. One hundred subjects (50 males and 50 females) received an audiological evaluation to rule out hearing loss and auditory processing disorder. The Gaps-in-Noise test was then conducted on all subjects. The mean gap detection threshold was 4.19 msec. A psychometric function by gap duration was constructed, revealing that the percentage of correct responses was less than or equal to 5% for a gap duration of 2 msec, 10-30% for a gap duration of 3 msec, 60-70% for a gap duration of 4 msec, and over 96% for gap durations of 5 msec or longer. The results suggest that the data obtained can be applied as reference values for future testing. In the subjects evaluated, the Gaps-in-Noise test proved to be consistent with low variability.
This study will examine the central regions and brain activation patterns associated with simple vocal behaviors under conditions of normal auditory feedback-when people hear themselves speak. Such feedback plays a major role in learning and maintaining human voice control. But voice control can be harmed by neurological injury or disease, reducing the ability of a person to orally communicate. Research has shown that auditory feedback is continuously monitored, brought about by both automatic and voluntary corrections in the amplitude (loudness) and frequency of (pitch) of the human voice. This study aims to determine which areas of the brain have activity dependent on the level of blood oxygen. It will provide new knowledge about basic vocal motor control and provide a basis for investigations into the integration of hearing and speaking in human vocal expression throughout life. Participants 18 to 45 years of age with normal hearing and voice function and with a steady heart rate may be eligible for this study. Participants will be evaluated by a speech-language specialist, regarding a history of voice health and measures of voice function. They will be tested on their ability to vary voice amplitude and frequency and tested on their hearing. Also, they will undergo an electrocardiogram to determine their heart rate. For the study, participants will undergo an MRI scan. During the MRI scan, patients will lie still on a table that can slide in and out of a metal cylinder surrounded by a strong magnetic field. Scanning time varies from 20 minutes to 3 hours, with most scans between 45 and 90 minutes. Patients may be asked to lie still for up to 90 minutes at a time. As the scanner takes pictures, there will be loud knocking noises, and patients will wear headphones to muffle the sound. The headphones will also enable patients to hear their voice. The patient's head will be positioned with a coil of 25 to 30 cm diameter and supported by a headrest. A microphone will be placed about 2 cm from the patient's mouth for communication and collection of data. Also, an angled mirror will be attached to the head coil, so that the patient can look outside of the scanner. By way of a projection screen, the patient will receive a visual cue to vocalize, or use his or her voice. Patients will be asked to repeatedly do some of the following vocalization tasks: (1) rest, (2) hum or sigh without voicing (exhale), (3) hum or sigh audibly, (4) hum audibly while increasing or decreasing voice frequency, and (5) hum audibly while increasing or decreasing voice amplitude. During the scan, patients will be able to communicate with the MRI staff at all times and may ask to be moved out of the machine at any time. Some scans may be done in a 3 Tesla scanner. It is the latest advance in MRI, with a stronger magnetic field than in the more common 1.5 Tesla scanner. Functional MRI is done while a person is performing tasks, such as moving a limb or speaking. The fMRI scan will take about 1 hour.