Age differences in central auditory system responses to naturalistic music

Haumann, Niels Trusbak; Petersen, Bjørn; Vuust, Peter; Brattico, Elvira

doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2023.108566

Cited by 3 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 80 publications

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“…To investigate this hypothesis , we recruited younger and older individuals and recorded their neural activity using EEG while they listened to simple isochronous equitone sequences presented at a stimulation frequency (Sf) of 1.5Hz. Analyses on event-related potentials (ERP) revealed that older adults exhibited heightened, more variable, and faster N100 responses, consistent with previous findings 3, [19][20][21][22][23][24] . These results support the notion that aging affects the ability to engage in 'sensory gating' 22 , specifically the suppression of cortical responses to repetitive and predictable stimuli 20,23 .…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

“…As the first tones within an auditory sequence are known to elicit much stronger neural responses compared to later tones, we focused subsequent analyses on tones from the 3 rd to the 7 th position (STD before the onset of a DEV tone). Furthermore, as most of the surveyed evidence highlighted a specific impact of ageing on the N100 component 3,[19][20][21][22][23][24] , subsequent analyses focused on the N100 component only. Analyses of the P50 and P200 components can be found in the Supplementary materials.…”

Section: Event-related Analysesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is consensus in associating these larger ERP responses with the reduced ability to employ 'sensory gating' 22 , an adaptive mechanism to suppress cortical responses to repetitions of predictable stimuli 20,23 . Furthermore, variability in the latency of event-related responses to sounds 21,25 and the reduction in steady-state responses to auditory metronomes 26,27 suggest a change in encoding the precise timing of sensory events, and internalizing the temporal regularity in auditory sequences. These observations suggest that aging may impact the capacities to detect regularities in the sensory environment, generate predictions about future events, and employ these predictions to inform sensory processing and perception.…”

Section: Introduction 'Wait What? Can You Repeat It?'mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The weakened sensitivity to auditory input via the brainstem is typically compensated by increased excitability of the auditory cortex [20] and altered responses to sounds [3,6,21–24]. Consequently, event-related potentials (ERPs) recorded by electroencephalography (EEG) exhibit enhanced amplitude responses in aging individuals, particularly in the N100 component [3,20,21,23,25–27]. There is consensus in associating these larger ERP responses with the reduced ability to employ ‘sensory gating’ [26], an adaptive mechanism to suppress cortical responses to repetitions of predictable stimuli [21,27].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is consensus in associating these larger ERP responses with the reduced ability to employ ‘sensory gating’ [26], an adaptive mechanism to suppress cortical responses to repetitions of predictable stimuli [21,27]. Furthermore, variability in the latency of event-related responses to sounds [25,28] and the reduction in steady-state responses to auditory metronomes [29,30] suggest deteriorations in the encoding of the precise timing of sensory events, and in internalizing temporal regularity in auditory sequences. At the same time, there is complementary evidence showing greater neural synchronization with amplitude and frequency modulations of sounds in aging individuals and increased sensitivity to temporal regularities, as revealed by metrics of phase concentration [17,22,24,31].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Aging impacts basic auditory and timing processes

Criscuolo,

Schwartze,

Bonetti

et al. 2024

Preprint

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Deterioration in the peripheral and central auditory systems is common in older adults and often leads to hearing and speech comprehension difficulties. Even when hearing remains intact, electrophysiological data of older adults frequently exhibit altered neural responses across the auditory pathway, reflected in variability in the phase alignment of neural activity to speech sound onsets. However, it remains unclear whether speech processing challenges in older adults stem from more fundamental deficits in auditory and timing processing. Here, we investigated the efficiency of aging individuals in encoding temporal regularities in acoustic sequences and their ability to predict future events. We recorded EEG in older and young individuals listening to simple isochronous tone sequences. A comprehensive analysis pipeline evaluated the amplitude, latency, and variability of event-related responses (ERPs) to each tone onset along the auditory sequences. Spectral parametrization and Inter-Trial Phase Coherence (ITPC) analyses assessed how participants encoded the temporal regularity in the acoustic environment. Our findings indicate that aging individuals exhibit altered temporal processing and reduced capacity to generate and utilize temporal predictions to time-lock and adaptively suppress neural responses to predictable and repeated tones in auditory sequences. Given that deteriorations in these basic timing capacities may affect other higher-order cognitive processes (e.g., attention, perception, and action), our results underscore the need for future research examining the link between timing abilities and general cognition across the lifespan.

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