An interventional study of Auditory training: temporal cues in Auditory Perceptual Disorders and Aging Problems, sponsored by University of Maryland, College Park. Completed at 1 site in United States. Open to participants aged 18 Years to 85 Years, including healthy volunteers. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2025-04-08.
Sponsored by University of Maryland, College Park · Not applicable, Interventional, and Health services research
Millions of elderly adults in the USA have age related hearing loss (ARHL), a malady that affects half of adults 60-69 years, and the majority of older adults. This hearing loss not only impacts communication and functional ability, but also is strongly associated with cognitive decline and decreased quality of life. This project aims to develop effective strategies to compensate and reverse this process through a deeper understanding of plasticity and adaptive auditory function, and how to engage it and harness it to remedy ARHL.
The detrimental effects of aging on auditory temporal processing have been well documented in humans and animal models. At present, there are gaps in knowledge of the extent to which these auditory temporal processing deficits can be mitigated in older adults with or without hearing loss through auditory training and neuroplasticity, to improve precision of neural timing and speech understanding. The long-term goal is to determine the extent to which hearing deficits in older adults can be ameliorated with auditory training. The investigators propose an innovative approach to the investigation of aging, hearing, and neuroplasticity by marrying perceptual training experiments with electrophysiological measurements. The objectives are to compare young normal-hearing (YNH), older normal-hearing (ONH), and older hearing-impaired (OHI) adult listeners, and evaluate the improvements in perceptual and electrophysiological measures of temporal processing after explicit training on auditory temporal processing tasks. The central hypothesis is that training of auditory temporal processing will produce concomitant improvements in both perceptual performance and neural encoding, which will close the gap in the age-related differences between groups. The central hypothesis will be tested by pursuing two specific aims: (Aim 1) Determine the extent to which perceptual training on temporal rate discrimination using simple non-speech stimuli improves perceptual and neural encoding in YNH, ONH, and OHI listeners; and (Aim 2) Determine the extent to which perceptual training on the processing of sentences with increasing presentation rate can improve behavioral performance and neural encoding in YNH, ONH, and OHI listeners. The expected outcomes are that the investigators will learn what perceptual training tasks lead to simultaneous improvements in perceptual and neural auditory temporal processing and the findings will produce a significant impact in older listeners who experience difficulty in communicating in daily life because they will lead directly to focused and novel forms of rehabilitation. This research is innovative because the investigators will have established techniques that are proven to provide significant improvements in auditory temporal processing and speech perception, combined with evidence of improvements to neural encoding. These studies will serve the larger goals of the program project grant because they will help identify the neuroplastic mechanisms in the brain of humans that correspond to successful behavioral outcomes in younger and older adults.
24 studies on the registry are indexed under Auditory Perceptual Disorders; 3 are open to participants now.
This study's enrollment of 405 is above the median of 52 across 18 interventional studies indexed under Auditory Perceptual Disorders.
Browse Auditory Perceptual Disorders studies →University of Maryland, College Park is the lead sponsor of 62 studies on the registry; 15 are open to participants now.
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Go through the criteria one by one — yes, no or not sure — and take the list to your doctor or the study team. Kept in this browser only.
Exclusion Criteria:
Underlined terms in the criteria open these too. Explained by clinicaltrials.gg, not part of the registry record. The study team decides who can take part.
Short tests of memory and thinking, each scored out of 30. Lower scores suggest more difficulty; criteria give a range, either to include people with memory problems or to leave them out.
MMSE and MoCA
Short tests of memory and thinking, each scored out of 30. Lower scores suggest more difficulty; criteria give a range, either to include people with memory problems or to leave them out.
Explained by clinicaltrials.gg, not part of the registry record. The study team decides who can take part.
Aim 1: Listeners will hear target acoustic stimuli that vary in a temporal (timing/duration) cue for 9, 1-hour training sessions and will receive correct-answer feedback. Aim 2: Listeners will hear sentences that vary in speech rate for 6, 1-hour training sessions and will receive correct-answer feedback.
Behavioral: Auditory training: temporal cues
Aim 1: Listeners will hear target acoustic stimuli that vary in either stimulus intensity or stimulus frequency during 9, 1-hour training sessions and will receive correct-answer feedback. Aim 2: Listeners will hear speech in varying levels of noise during 6, 1-hour training sessions and will receive correct-answer feedback.
Behavioral: Auditory training: temporal cues
Listeners will be evaluated on pre-training and post-training tests, but will receive no training at all.
Behavioral training for 6-9 hours in listening to specific characteristics of acoustic signals. Listeners receive correct-answer feedback on each trial.
Also known as: Auditory training: non-temporal cues
Improvement in behavioral auditory temporal processing measures (Aim 1)
Decrease in threshold (in msec) for discriminating a comparison pulse train to a standard, decrease in cross-over points (in msec) for trained word contrasts, and increase in rate of speech for 50% correct recognition
Time frame: completion of study, approximately 30 months
Improvement in recognition of trained stimuli - fast speech (Aim 2)
Increase in speech rate at which listener maintains 50% and 80% correct recognition
Time frame: completion of study, approximately 24 months
Change in spectral energy and neural phase locking for trained stimuli (Aim 1)
Increase in spectral energy for pulse trains, cessation of neural phase locking for trained words during silent intervals of the word, and increase in phase-locking factor following training of time-compressed speech, as measured on the Auditory Steady-State Response
Time frame: completion of study, approximately 30 months
Change in phase locking to trained or equivalent stimuli (Aim 2)
Increase in phase-locking factor following training of time-compressed speech, as measured in the frequency-following response
Time frame: completion of study in approximately 24 months
Change in reconstruction accuracy to trained or equivalent stimuli (Aim 2)
Increase in reconstruction accuracy following training of time-compressed speech, as measured with envelope tracking to five-minute speech samples
Time frame: completion of study in approximately 24 months
Plan to share: Yes — The investigators will share the final dataset that includes initial assessment information, behavioral performance pre-training and post-training data, and neurophysiologic data. Any shared dataset(s) will be stripped of protected health information (PHI) before release, and the investigators will make the data and associated documentation available only to IRB-approved colleagues and collaborators under an agreement that provides for: (1) a commitment to using the data only for research purposes and not to inappropriately identify any individual participant; and (2) a commitment to securing the data using appropriate information technology and practices.
Supporting information: Study protocol
Time frame: Six months after publication until May 31, 2022
Access criteria: The data will be available only to Institutional Review Board-approved colleagues and collaborators under an agreement that provides for: (1) a commitment to using the data only for research purposes and not to inappropriately identify any individual participant; and (2) a commitment to securing the data using appropriate information technology and practices. The PI (Gordon-Salant) and co-PI (Anderson) will review requests for access to the data. Once approved, access will be provided by Prometheus Software, LLC. Prometheus will develop best practices for securely sharing research data with our collaborators and the wider scientific community. Finally, Prometheus will ensure that the project complies with all relevant data distribution agreements and data submission requirements.
No publications or documents are linked to this record.
Ran from Feb 2018 to primary completion in May 2024, 75 months.
Of 12 interventional studies with no phase under Auditory Perceptual Disorders, half reached primary completion within 56 months of starting (the median), counting those still running; a quarter within 16 and three quarters within 62. This study's 75 months is above that.
How these figures are worked out, and which studies are left out of them.
This study is completed, as verified in Apr 2025. You cannot join it, but the record below documents what was studied.
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Auditory Perceptual Disorders →
University of Maryland, College Park