GuangTing Mai

GuangTing Mai

Wellcome Research Fellow, MRC Cognition & Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge

MRC-CBU | CamNeuro | ORCID | Google Scholar | Contact

Name pronunciation:
/g-wang-ting-my/

Neural tracking and neuroplasticity of speech processing in adults with age-related hearing loss

Over 70% adults have mild-to-moderate hearing loss in their later life (e.g., >70 yrs old). This condition may not affect listening in quiet but it often causes challenges in speech comprehension in daily noisy listening environments compared to young normally hearing people. Age-related hearing loss (or 'presbycusis') is also known as one of the early risk factors of dementia.

We conducted studies that investigated how ageing and hearing loss contribute to atypical sensory neural tracking of speech (brainstem frequency following response (FFR) to fundamental frequency and neural phase locking to speech envelopes in the auditory cortex) in both quiet and noisy backgrounds and how these sensory tracking activities are associated with behavioural performances of speech recognition in noise in ageing adults:

Mai, G., Tuomainen, J., & Howell, P. (2018). Relationship between speech-evoked neural responses and perception of speech in noise in older adults. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 143(3):1333-1345. View publication >>

Figures from Mai & Howell (2023, Hear Res) (licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Questions also arise that it is difficult to distinguish contributions between atypical neural speech tracking and various co-occurring factors (e.g., cognitive declines) to breakdown of speech understanding following ageing and hearing loss. Simple regression analyses may not solve such issue due to collinearity between these factors and neural tracking. Also it is challenging to disentangle age and hearing loss (as they are always highly correlated) and different neural tracking signatures that may also be correlated between each other. We thus employed more proper statistical models combining principal component analyses and mediation models (neural mediation of the effects of age and hearing loss on speech behaviours) to illustrate how individual differences in speech-in-noise perception can be better explained by sensory tracking of speech in adults with a wide range of age and hearing status:

Figure from Mai & Howell (2023, Hear Res) (licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Mai, G., & Howell, P. (2023). The possible role of early-stage phase-locked neural activities in speech-in-noise perception in human adults across age and hearing loss. Hearing Research, 427:108647. View publication >>

Neuroplasticity of speech processsing in noise in adults with age-related hearing loss

We studied functional changes over time in temporal and frontal cortices using fNIRS in ageing adults with mild-to-moderate hearing loss following a training program of speech recognition under noisy backgrounds. We illustrated promising success in using fNIRS to observe neuroplasticity where we recorded significant improvements in brain functions (changes in auditory responses, listening efforts and functional connectivity) during speech-in-noise perception:

Figure from Mai et al. (2024, Brain Topogr) (licensed under CC BY 4.0)

Mai, G., Jiang, Z., Wang, X., Tachtsidis, I., & Howell, P. (2024). Neuroplasticity of speech-in-noise processing in older adults assessed by functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Brain Topography, 37(6):1139-1157. View publication >>

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