Get Involved

Age-Related Changes in Spatial Hearing

Project: "Spatial hearing and Age-related Hearing Loss [NIH F32]"
Eligibility: Adults 18 years or older with normal hearing
Goal: Understand potential changes with age in the way the brain represents and extracts information about the location of sounds in space or the differences in sounds presented to the two ears.
Contact Info: Auditory & Speech Sciences Laboratory; Email: assl@usf.edu; Phone: 813.974.4148; Mention the "F32 Spatial Hearing Study."

Learn more:  The human brain is amazingly precise in the ability to compare and combine sound from the two ears to the advantage of the listener.  Such processing allows us to locate sound sources in space, to quickly and subconsciously build up a "template" representation of room acoustics, and to parse target (more-desired) sounds from background (less-desired) sounds.  In this project, we focus on the opponent-channel model of binaural hearing and potential changes in that process with age and hearing loss.  Listeners in this project will complete a series of listening tasks that require the participant to indicate which side of the head they hear a sound - left or right.  They also will participate in a series of measurements of brain activity that occurs while listening passively and/or actively to sounds presented to the two ears.  The later measures use EEG (electroencephalography) to record brain activity.  Participants will be evaluated during a series of ~ 2 hour sessions.  You will be compensated with an hourly payment for your participation.

Please contact us to participate!