Persistent post-concussion symptoms include neural auditory processing in young children.

Aim: Difficulty understanding speech following concussion is likely caused by auditory processing impairments. We hypothesized that concussion disrupts pitch and phonetic processing of a sound, cues in understanding a talker.

Patients & Methods/results: We obtained frequency following responses to a syllable from 120 concussed and 120 control.

Subconcussion revealed by sound processing in the brain.

Introduction/purpose: We tested the hypothesis that an objective measure of auditory processing reveals a history of head trauma that does not meet the clinical definition of concussion.

Methods: Division I collegiate student-athletes ( = 709) across 19 sports were divided into groups, based on their sport, using prevailing classifications of "contact" (317 males, 212 females) and "noncontact" (58 males, 122 females). Participants were evaluated using the frequency-following response (FFR) to speech.

Athleticism and sex impact neural processing of sound.

Biology and experience both influence the auditory brain. Sex is one biological factor with pervasive effects on auditory processing. Females process sounds faster and more robustly than males.

Listening in the Moment: How Bilingualism Interacts With Task Demands to Shape Active Listening.

While there is evidence for bilingual enhancements of inhibitory control and auditory processing, two processes that are fundamental to daily communication, it is not known how bilinguals utilize these cognitive and sensory enhancements during real-world listening. To test our hypothesis that bilinguals engage their enhanced cognitive and sensory processing in real-world listening situations, bilinguals and monolinguals performed a selective attention task involving competing talkers, a common demand of everyday listening, and then later passively listened to the same competing sentences. During the active and passive listening periods, evoked responses to the competing talkers were collected to understand how online auditory processing facilitates active listening and if this processing differs between bilinguals and monolinguals.

Sex differences in auditory processing vary across estrous cycle.

In humans, females process a sound's harmonics more robustly than males. As estrogen regulates auditory plasticity in a sex-specific manner in seasonally breeding animals, estrogen signaling is one hypothesized mechanism for this difference in humans. To investigate whether sex differences in harmonic encoding vary similarly across the reproductive cycle of mammals, we recorded frequency-following responses (FFRs) to a complex sound in male and female rats.

Multiple Cases of Auditory Neuropathy Illuminate the Importance of Subcortical Neural Synchrony for Speech-in-noise Recognition and the Frequency-following Response.

Objectives: The role of subcortical synchrony in speech-in-noise (SIN) recognition and the frequency-following response (FFR) was examined in multiple listeners with auditory neuropathy. Although an absent FFR has been documented in one listener with idiopathic neuropathy who has severe difficulty recognizing SIN, several etiologies cause the neuropathy phenotype. Consequently, it is necessary to replicate absent FFRs and concomitant SIN difficulties in patients with multiple sources and clinical presentations of neuropathy to elucidate fully the importance of subcortical neural synchrony for the FFR and SIN recognition.

Auditory Cortical Changes Precede Brainstem Changes During Rapid Implicit Learning: Evidence From Human EEG.

The auditory system is sensitive to stimulus regularities such as frequently occurring sounds and sound combinations. Evidence of regularity detection can be seen in how neurons across the auditory network, from brainstem to cortex, respond to the statistical properties of the soundscape, and in the rapid learning of recurring patterns in their environment by children and adults. Although rapid auditory learning is presumed to involve functional changes to the auditory network, the chronology and directionality of changes are not well understood.

Auditory neurophysiological development in early childhood: A growth curve modeling approach.

Objective: During early childhood, the development of communication skills, such as language and speech perception, relies in part on auditory system maturation. Because auditory behavioral tests engage cognition, mapping auditory maturation in the absence of cognitive influence remains a challenge. Furthermore, longitudinal investigations that capture auditory maturation within and between individuals in this age group are scarce.

Non-stimulus-evoked activity as a measure of neural noise in the frequency-following response.

Background: The frequency-following response, or FFR, is a neurophysiologic response that captures distinct aspects of sound processing. Like all evoked responses, FFR is susceptible to electric and myogenic noise contamination during collection. Click-evoked auditory brainstem response collection standards have been adopted for FFR collection, however, whether these standards sufficiently limit FFR noise contamination is unknown.

Rhythm, reading, and sound processing in the brain in preschool children.

A child's success in school relies on their ability to quickly grasp language and reading skills, the foundations of which are acquired even before entering a formal classroom setting. Previous studies in preschoolers have begun to establish relationships linking beat synchronization, preliteracy skills, and auditory processing. Beat synchronization involves the integration of sensorimotor systems with auditory and cognitive circuits and, therefore calls on many of the same neural networks as language.

Clapping in Time With Feedback Relates Pervasively With Other Rhythmic Skills of Adolescents and Young Adults.

Rhythmic expertise is a multidimensional skill set with clusters of distinct rhythmic abilities. For example, the ability to clap in time with feedback relates extensively to distinct beat- and pattern-based rhythmic skills in school-age children. In this study we aimed to determine whether clapping in time would relate to both beat- and pattern- based rhythmic tasks among adolescents and young adults.

Case studies in neuroscience: cortical contributions to the frequency-following response depend on subcortical synchrony.

Frequency-following responses to musical notes spanning the octave 65-130 Hz were elicited in a person with auditory neuropathy, a disorder of subcortical neural synchrony, and a control subject. No phaselocked responses were observed in the person with auditory neuropathy. The control subject had robust responses synchronized to the fundamental frequency and its harmonics.

Sex differences in subcortical auditory processing only partially explain higher prevalence of language disorders in males.

Males and females differ in their subcortical evoked responses to sound. For many evoked response measures, the sex difference is driven by a faster developmental decline of auditory processing in males. Using the frequency-following response (FFR), an evoked potential that reflects predominately midbrain processing of stimulus features, sex differences were identified in the response to the temporal envelope of speech.

Distinct rhythmic abilities align with phonological awareness and rapid naming in school-age children.

Difficulty in performing rhythmic tasks often co-occurs with literacy difficulties. Motivated by evidence showing that people can vary in their performance across different rhythmic tasks, we asked whether two rhythmic skills identified as distinct in school-age children and young adults would reveal similar or different relationships with two literacy skills known to be important for successful reading development. We addressed our question by focusing on 55 typically developing children (ages 5-8).

Baseline profiles of auditory, vestibular, and visual functions in youth tackle football players.

Aim: Neurosensory tests have emerged as components of sport-related concussion management. Limited normative data are available in healthy, nonconcussed youth athletes.

Patients & Methods/results: In 2017 and 2018, we tested 108 youth tackle football players immediately before their seasons on the frequency-following response, Balance Error Scoring System, and King-Devick test.

Play Sports for a Quieter Brain: Evidence From Division I Collegiate Athletes.

Background: Playing sports has many benefits, including boosting physical, cardiovascular, and mental fitness. We tested whether athletic benefits extend to sensory processing-specifically auditory processing-as measured by the frequency-following response (FFR), a scalp-recorded electrophysiological potential that captures neural activity predominately from the auditory midbrain to complex sounds.

Hypothesis: Given that FFR amplitude is sensitive to experience, with enrichment enhancing FFRs and injury reducing them, we hypothesized that playing sports is a form of enrichment that results in greater FFR amplitude.

Evolving perspectives on the sources of the frequency-following response.

The auditory frequency-following response (FFR) is a non-invasive index of the fidelity of sound encoding in the brain, and is used to study the integrity, plasticity, and behavioral relevance of the neural encoding of sound. In this Perspective, we review recent evidence suggesting that, in humans, the FFR arises from multiple cortical and subcortical sources, not just subcortically as previously believed, and we illustrate how the FFR to complex sounds can enhance the wider field of auditory neuroscience. Far from being of use only to study basic auditory processes, the FFR is an uncommonly multifaceted response yielding a wealth of information, with much yet to be tapped.

Performance on auditory, vestibular, and visual tests is stable across two seasons of youth tackle football.

: Few studies have tracked neurologic function in youth football players longitudinally. This study aimed to determine whether changes in tests of auditory, vestibular, and/or visual functions are evident after participation in one or two seasons of youth tackle football.: Prospective cohort study.

Analyzing the FFR: A tutorial for decoding the richness of auditory function.

The frequency-following response, or FFR, is a neurophysiological response to sound that precisely reflects the ongoing dynamics of sound. It can be used to study the integrity and malleability of neural encoding of sound across the lifespan. Sound processing in the brain can be impaired with pathology and enhanced through expertise.

Neurophysiological, linguistic, and cognitive predictors of children's ability to perceive speech in noise.

Hearing in noisy environments is a complicated task that engages attention, memory, linguistic knowledge, and precise auditory-neurophysiological processing of sound. Accumulating evidence in school-aged children and adults suggests these mechanisms vary with the task's demands. For instance, co-located speech and noise demands a large cognitive load and recruits working memory, while spatially separating speech and noise diminishes this load and draws on alternative skills.

Stable auditory processing underlies phonological awareness in typically developing preschoolers.

Sound processing is an important scaffold for early language acquisition. Here we investigate its relationship to three components of phonological processing in young children (∼age 3): Phonological Awareness (PA), Phonological Memory (PM), and Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN). While PA is believed to hinge upon consistency of sound processing to distinguish and manipulate word features, PM relies on an internal store of the sounds of language and RAN relies on fluid production of those sounds.

Sex differences in subcortical auditory processing emerge across development.

Human subcortical auditory processing is sexually dimorphic. The prevailing view - that sex differences arise from cochlear differences - remains unproven, and the extent to which these differences reflect distinct auditory processes is unknown. To determine the origin of subcortical sex differences, we mapped their emergence onto the peripheral-to-central maturation of the auditory system in 516 participants (250 female) across three age groups: 3-5, 14-15, and 22-26 years.

Case studies in neuroscience: subcortical origins of the frequency-following response.

The auditory frequency-following response (FFR) reflects synchronized and phase-locked activity along the auditory pathway in response to sound. Although FFRs were historically thought to reflect subcortical activity, recent evidence suggests an auditory cortex contribution as well. Here we present electrophysiological evidence for the FFR's origins from two cases: a patient with bilateral auditory cortex lesions and a patient with auditory neuropathy, a condition of subcortical origin.