Audiomotor Perceptual Training Enhances Speech Intelligibility in Background Noise.

ABSTRACT: Sensory and motor skills can be improved with training, but learning is often restricted to practice stimuli. As an exception, training on closed-loop (CL) sensorimotor interfaces, such as action video games and musical instruments, can impart a broad spectrum of perceptual benefits. Here we ask whether computerized CL auditory training can enhance speech understanding in levels of background noise that approximate a crowded restaurant. Elderly hearing-impaired subjects trained for 8 weeks on a CL game that, like a musical instrument, challenged them to monitor subtle deviations between predicted and actual auditory feedback as they moved their fingertip through a virtual soundscape. We performed our study as a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial by training other subjects i

SUBMITTER: Whitton JP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5997394 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature