2003 — 2004 |
Peelle, Jonathan E |
F31Activity Code Description: To provide predoctoral individuals with supervised research training in specified health and health-related areas leading toward the research degree (e.g., Ph.D.). |
Comprehension/Adaptation to Rapid Speech in Older Adults
[unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Spoken language comprehension is a primary means of communication for most adults, and remains so throughout the lifespan. Although older adults' language comprehension is generally good, age-related cognitive decline results in some comprehension deficits. These deficits are not simply a consequence of age-related declines in hearing acuity. The long-term goal of this research program is to find strategies that older adults can actively employ to improve their comprehension of spoken language. This will be accomplished by assessing young and older participants' comprehension of meaningful speech that varies in both speech rate (accomplished using time-compression techniques) and syntactic complexity, two manipulations that older adults are known to find differentially more difficult than their younger counterparts. Of particular interest is whether older adults' performance will improve with repeated exposure to time-compressed speech, and whether this improvement for rapid speech will aid in the comprehension of syntactically complex speech. [unreadable] [unreadable]
|
0.954 |
2015 — 2019 |
Peelle, Jonathan E |
R01Activity Code Description: To support a discrete, specified, circumscribed project to be performed by the named investigator(s) in an area representing his or her specific interest and competencies. |
The Neurocognitive Basis of Effortful Listening
? DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Approximately 36 million Americans report having some degree of hearing impairment. Hearing loss is associated with social isolation, depression, cognitive decline, and economic cost due to reduced work productivity. Understanding ways to optimize communication in listeners with hearing impairment is therefore a critical challenge for speech perception researchers. A hallmark of recent research has been the development of the concept of listening effort, which emphasizes the importance of cognitive processing during speech perception: Listeners with hearing impairment can often understand spoken language, but with increased cognitive effort, taking resources away from other processes such as attention and memory. Unfortunately, the specific cognitive processes that play a role in effortful listening remain poorly understood. The goal of the current research is to provide a more specific account of the neural and cognitive systems involved in effortful listening, and investigate how these factors affect speech comprehension. The studies are designed around a framework of lexical competition, which refers to how listeners select a correct target word from among the possible words they may have heard (Was that word cap or cat?). Lexical competition is influenced by properties of single words (words that sound similar to many others, like cat, are more difficult to process), the acoustic signal (poorer acoustic clarity makes correct identification more difficult), and individual differences in cognitive processing (lower inhibitory ability makes incorrect targets more likely to be perceived). Neuroanatomically, these processes are supported by dissociable regions of temporal and frontal cortex, consistent with a large-scale cortical network that supports speech comprehension. Importantly, individual differences in both hearing impairment and cognitive ability interact with the type of speech being processed to determine the level of success a listener will have in understanding speech. The current research will involve collecting measures of hearing and cognition in all participants to investigate how individual differences in these measures impact speech perception. Converging evidence from behavioral studies, eyetracking, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) will be used to explore the cognitive and neural basis of speech perception. Aim 1 evaluates the relationship between lexical competition and listening effort during speech perception. Aim 2 characterizes multiple cognitive processes involved in processing degraded speech. Aim 3 assesses how individual differences in hearing and cognition predict speech perception, relying on a framework of lexical competition to inform theoretical interpretation. These studies will show a relationship between lexical competition and the cognitive processes engaged when processing degraded speech, providing a theoretically-motivated framework to better explain the challenges faced by both normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners.
|
1 |
2017 — 2018 |
Peelle, Jonathan E |
R21Activity Code Description: To encourage the development of new research activities in categorical program areas. (Support generally is restricted in level of support and in time.) |
Neural Systems Supporting Speech Processing in Listeners With Cochlear Implants
Abstract Approximately 36 million Americans report having some degree of hearing impairment. Hearing impairment is associated with social isolation, depression, and cognitive decline. The toll of hearing impairment is not only personal, but economic: For Americans who have hearing impairment, the lifetime cost is estimated to be $4.6 billion, mostly due to reduced work productivity. Listeners with hearing impairment can often understand spoken language, but with increased effort, taking cognitive resources away from other processes such as attention and memory. An important challenge is therefore to understand how the brain copes with a degraded speech signal and the cognitive processes that are most critical to successful comprehension. Adult listeners with cochlear implants are a unique group in which to investigate effortful listening: They have typically adapted to auditory deprivation for a period of years of profound hearing loss, followed by some degree of hearing restoration following implantation. Following increased auditory input due to cochlear implantation, the degree to which individual listeners are able to successfully recognize speech, especially in the presence of background noise, is extremely variable. Previous attempts to explain this variability in the context of underlying patterns of brain activity have been unsuccessful, in large part because the technical challenges associated with neuroimaging in the presence of an implanted medical device have prevented adequate localization of neural responses to speech. The goal of our research is to understand the cognitive systems that support speech recognition in listeners with cochlear implants and to use knowledge about these systems to improve behavioral outcomes. We do so using converging evidence from behavioral measures and functional brain imaging. We make use of high-density diffuse optical tomography (HD-DOT), a form of optical brain imaging that produces anatomically-localized indices of regional cortical activity. We will map the neural systems supporting speech comprehension in listeners with cochlear implants, which we expect to differ from those engaged by listeners with good hearing. We will then evaluate the degree to which neural markers of effortful listening can predict individual differences in speech recognition success in the presence of background noise. Together the findings will help ground our understanding of cochlear implant-aided speech recognition in a neuroanatomically-constrained framework and develop more accurate outcome measures.
|
1 |
2018 — 2019 |
Culver, Joseph P (co-PI) [⬀] Peelle, Jonathan E |
R21Activity Code Description: To encourage the development of new research activities in categorical program areas. (Support generally is restricted in level of support and in time.) |
High-Density Optical Tomography in Patients With Cochlear Implants
Abstract Optical brain imaging allows the noninvasive mapping of human brain activity in a quiet and magnet-free environment. This technology is particularly important for patients who have implanted medical devices, such as cochlear implants, that rule out magnetic resonance imaging. Being able to map brain activity in patients with implanted medical devices is critical because it allows us to understand the complex balance between neural networks in individuals that support successful behavior, and to diagnose where breakdowns in activity are problematic. Adult listeners with cochlear implants are a unique group in which to investigate task-evoked neural activity: They have typically adapted to auditory deprivation for a period of years of profound hearing loss, followed by some degree of hearing restoration following implantation. Following increased auditory input due to cochlear implantation, the degree to which individual listeners are able to successfully recognize speech, especially in the presence of background noise, is extremely variable. Previous attempts to explain this variability in the context of underlying patterns of brain activity have been unsuccessful, in large part because the technical challenges associated with neuroimaging in the presence of an implanted medical device have prevented whole-brain imaging of neural responses to speech. The goal of our research is to bring methodological improvements to bear in optical neuroimaging that will allow us to use high-density diffuse optical tomography (HD-DOT) to effectively image single-subject responses to spoken language. We will validate atlas-based spatial normalization, necessary in patients with medical implants because they do not have MRI images available to aid the localization process. We will also develop improved head models and denoising algorithms that will improve the optical imaging signal-to-noise ratio. Finally, we will implement a novel story comprehension paradigm to map receptive language areas in individual participants, including measures of test-retest reliability, which we will then translate to patients with cochlear implants. Our long-term research plan is to understand the neural systems that support speech recognition in listeners with cochlear implants and to use knowledge about these systems to improve behavioral outcomes.
|
1 |
2018 |
Peelle, Jonathan E |
R01Activity Code Description: To support a discrete, specified, circumscribed project to be performed by the named investigator(s) in an area representing his or her specific interest and competencies. |
The Neurocognitive Basis of Effortful Listening - Administrative Supplement For Alzheimer's Disease
Abstract Cognitive control refers to maintaining information such as goals, instructions, or plans for short periods of time, and using this information to appropriately guide behavior. Alzheimer?s Disease (AD) is the most prevalent neurodegenerative disease, associated with increased accumulation of proteins amyloid beta and tau in the brain and behavioral changes to domains including memory and cognitive control. Although a small proportion of AD patients experience onset at an early age, the prevalence of AD increases with older age and is most common in older adults. Another condition common in older adulthood is age-related hearing loss, present in upwards of 50% of adults over the age of 70. In the current proposal we seek to understand the relationship of hearing, cognition, and the brain in older adults with wand without AD. We will test hearing sensitivity, as well as speech perception in noise using words whose linguistic properties make them easier or harder to understand (based on the number of similar-sounding words), with the harder words placing increased demands on cognitive control systems. We thus expect patients with symptomatic AD, who have diminished cognitive control, to perform more poorly. In addition, we will investigate the degree to which individual differences in cognitive ability and brain health (cortical thickness, resting state fMRI, and PET- identified tau depositions) relate to hearing, testing the hypothesis that hearing loss may be associated with decreased cortical function in adults with symptomatic AD.
|
1 |
2019 |
Peelle, Jonathan E |
R56Activity Code Description: To provide limited interim research support based on the merit of a pending R01 application while applicant gathers additional data to revise a new or competing renewal application. This grant will underwrite highly meritorious applications that if given the opportunity to revise their application could meet IC recommended standards and would be missed opportunities if not funded. Interim funded ends when the applicant succeeds in obtaining an R01 or other competing award built on the R56 grant. These awards are not renewable. |
Age-Related Changes in Language Processing
Abstract Normal aging involves changes to sensory and cognitive systems that affect many aspects of life, including spoken communication. Speech comprehension involves rapidly mapping a complex acoustic signal to our knowledge of words and extracting higher-order meaning from sentence or story structure. When the sound signal is degraded?for example, due to background noise, or a listener?s poor hearing?this task is made more difficult. There is good evidence that in such cases of acoustic challenge listeners must engage additional cognitive resources supported by domain-general executive networks. Older adult listeners frequently have greater difficulty understanding and remembering speech in noise compared to young adults. Although some of this difficulty is due to age-related hearing loss, hearing ability alone cannot account for all of the comprehension changes that occur with age. One appealing explanation for older adults? increased speech comprehension difficulty is a more limited set of cognitive resources, making them unable to meet the cognitive demands of challenging listening situations. However, it is important to consider that a listener?s motivation to understand plays a critical role in communication. In the current grant we experimentally test the role of reward on language processing by varying the amount listeners are rewarded for correct responses during speech comprehension tasks. Reward is linked to dopamine-mediated pathways important for guiding learning and behavior. We hypothesize that increased reward (associated with greater motivation) will increase a listener?s use of executive processing resources, and result in greater speech intelligibility. Because normal aging is associated with changes in dopamine responsiveness, we expect that age differences in reward sensitivity may explain a portion of the age difference in speech comprehension. We will also conduct hierarchical statistical modeling to estimate the relative contributions of hearing ability, cognitive ability, and genetic correlates of dopamine function to listeners? success understanding speech in noise. The results will improve our understanding of factors that contribute to successful aging, and help identify mechanisms for intervention to improve performance when necessary.
|
1 |
2020 |
Braver, Todd S [⬀] Peelle, Jonathan E |
R21Activity Code Description: To encourage the development of new research activities in categorical program areas. (Support generally is restricted in level of support and in time.) |
Healthy Aging and the Cost of Cognitive Effort
Project Summary (Abstract) This proposal explores the neural and psychological mechanisms that underlie older adult decision-making, particularly decisions about whether or not to engage in cognitively effortful activities. Basic research in the cognitive neuroscience of aging has suggested that older adults show declines in the ability to control thoughts and actions based on internal goals, and that this may stem from age-related changes in the functioning of the prefrontal cortex and mid-brain dopamine system. Yet older adults also seem to experience clear shifts in motivational prioritization, although currently the relationship between motivation, cognition function, and decision-making is poorly understood. The current proposal provides a novel perspective on this issue, by focusing on interactions between motivation and cognitive control through the conceptual lens of neuroeconomic decision-making. Specifically, we build upon a recent theoretical framework, value-based cognitive control (VBCC), which postulates that motivational value serves to counteract the subjective and computational costs of engaging in cognitive control. A key implication of the VBCC framework is that age- related motivational reprioritization may shift cost-benefit computations, leading towards increased subjective costs associated with engagement in cognitively effortful activities. The project directly tests this hypothesis, utilizing an innovative neuroeconomic decision-making paradigm known as the COG-ED (Cognitive Effort Discounting), which provides the means to quantitatively estimate the subjective cost of cognitive effort. We utilize the COG-ED to examine the neural mechanisms associated with potentially increased cognitive effort costs in older adults, using state-of-the-art neuroimaging methods. Specifically, we employ simultaneous PET/fMRI scanning to both monitor effort-related activity in brain regions associated with encoding of subjective motivational value, while at the same time directly assessing dopamine function in these regions. We further test the domain-generality of our theoretical framework, utilizing the COG-ED and a within-subjects neuroimaging design to test for increased cognitive effort costs among older adults in both working memory and speech comprehension. We rigorously explore the ecological validity of the VBCC framework, by repeatedly sampling older adult daily-life experiences and motivations towards cognitively effortful activities with a naturalistic, ecological momentary assessment (EMA) approach. This project component enables a strong test of cross-level bridging hypotheses, such as whether age-related declines in brain valuation mechanisms contribute to increased cognitive effort costs and reduced engagement in daily-life effortful activities among older adults. The findings of this project have high
|
1 |