Jayashree S. Bhat

Vestibular evoked myogenic potential in noise-induced hearing loss

Noise affects ones hearing as well as balance mechanism. The hearing mechanism of the noise-exposed individuals has been extensively studied. However, in view of the poor research focus on the sacculo-collic reflexes, especially in this study area, the present study was undertaken to examine the vestibular evoked myogenic potentials (VEMP) in subjects with noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL). A total of 30 subjects (55 ears) with NIHL participated in the present study within the age range of 30-40 years. VEMP recordings were done at 99 dBnHL using IHS instrument. The results indicated that as the average pure tone hearing threshold increased, the VEMP latencies were prolonged and peak to peak amplitude was reduced in NIHL subjects. Out of the 55 ears, VEMP was absent in 16 (29.0%) ears. The latency was prolonged and the peak to peak amplitude was reduced in 19 (34.6%) ears. VEMP results were normal in 20 (36.4%) ears. Therefore, VEMP was abnormal or absent in 67% of NIHL subjects in the present study. Hence it can be concluded that the possibility of vestibular dysfunction, specially the saccular pathway, is high in individuals with NIHL. VEMP, a non-invasive and user friendly procedure, can be employed in these individuals to assess sacculo-collic reflex.

Auditory Neuropathy/Dys-synchrony In School-aged Hearing-impaired Children: A South Indian Perspective

Abstract Recently, use of otoacoustic emission technology has led to identification of auditory neuropathy as a distinct hearing disorder in children as well as adults. Children with auditory neuropathy require audiologic and educational management that may differ from that required by other hearing impaired. The purpose of this study was to estimate the prevalence and audiologic characteristics of auditory dys-synchrony in school-aged hearing- impaired children in an integrated school; 220 students from grade one to grade eight were recruited for the study. Initially all the subjects were screened using DPOAE and the subjects who had otoacoustic emissions present were subjected for a detailed diagnostic evaluation. Results showed that the prevalence of auditory dys-synchrony was around 2.27% in hearing-impaired individuals. These results indicate that auditory dyssynchrony is not an extremely rare disorder and although only a small portion of the population of children with hearing loss is affected, it is undoubtedly important to detect this disorder so that individualized treatment plans can be devised.

Tone-evoked brainstem responses and auditory steady state responses to 40hz and 80hz amplitude modulated stimuli with different frequencies - a comparative study

AbstractTone burst evoked auditory brainstem responses and auditory steady state responses with 40 or > 80 Hz modulation can be used to determine frequency specific threshold.AimThe present study was taken up to check for the efficacy of estimating hearing thresholds by tone burst ABR and ASSR. The frequency effect (low, mid and high) on estimating the threshold was also focused upon.Methods20 normal hearing adults (40 ears) in the age range of 16 to 30 years participated in the study. The pure tone audiometry and immittance was initially done. Subsequently, tone-burst ABR, 80Hz ASSR and 40Hz ASSR to estimate the threshold with three frequencies 500Hz (low), 2000Hz (mid) and 4000Hz (high) was done. The data was analyzed statistically using pair sample t-test.ResultsASSR threshold for 80Hz and 40Hz was almost comparable. ASSR was superior to estimate the threshold than tone-burst ABR. For the low frequency the discrepancy between the behavioral threshold and frequency-specific evoked audiometry was more when compared to mid and high frequency.ConclusionPresent study showed that steady-state responses were efficient means of threshold detection than visual detection of ABR wave-V. In awake adult subjects, 40Hz and 80Hz amplitude modulated produced similar results. For the threshold estimation ASSR was better than tone-burst ABR.

Perception of Consonants in Speech-Shaped Noise among Young and Middle-Aged Adults.

OBJECTIVE The present study was carried out to compare the consonant perception of young and middle-aged adults in quiet and noisy listening conditions. MATERIALS AND METHODS Twenty-nine adults aged between 18 and 55 years old participated in the study, and were separated into two groups based on their age: Group I, comprising 15 young adults aged between 18 and 40 years old, and Group II, comprising 14 middle-aged adults aged between 41 and 55 years old. All the participants had normal hearing sensitivity in both ears. RESULTS Consonant perception was better in favorable listening conditions for both young and middle-aged adults. Comparison of the consonant identification scores of young and middle-aged adults showed significantly poorer scores among middle-aged adults in both quiet and noisy listening conditions. CONCLUSION The findings of the present study reveal that middle-aged adults have small but significant consonant perception difficulties compared to younger adults in quiet and noisy listening conditions.

Assessment of Quality of Life of People Who Stutter: A Cross-sectional Study

Stuttering is a complex communication disorder that impedes the normal flow and pattern of speech, which is characterized by involuntary audible or inaudible pause, repetitions, prolongations, blocks, etc. Other than the core behaviors, people who stutter experience various other problems such as fear, anxiety, depression, shame, etc., which can in turn affect the quality of life (QOL). The purpose of this study is to develop a questionnaire in order to assess the QOL of people who stutter. A total of 30 participants aged between 18 and 30 years were enrolled for the study. Out of the stutterers included, 15 were employed and 15 were non-employed/students. The study was carried out in two phases. The first phase involved the development of a questionnaire based on literature search and available tests. The second phase involved administering the validated questionnaire on the participants. The questionnaire consisted of six domains targeting (1) speech-related fear and anxiety, (2) interpersonal and social relationships, (3) behavioral reaction to stuttering, (4) educational status, (5) employment and job opportunity, and (6) effect of speech therapy. For each item, response scales were organized (2—almost always, 1—sometime, 0—not at all). Developed questionnaire showed good content validity for all the domains and questions. The result of Cronbachs alpha for each domain indicates moderate internal consistency and excellent internal consistency for the overall questionnaire. Multiple domains were observed to be affected among adults who stutter, and the differences were not found to be significantly different as compared to the available QOL data from other cultural settings.

Self-efficacy and Verbal Fluency — Does Age Play a Role?

Self-efficacy refers to the beliefs that one possesses about his/her ability to achieve specific targets in a certain context. It is one of the important aspects of metacognitive processes. There are emerging evidences that most of the cognitive processes decline with age but the kind of trajectory metacognitive ability, like self-efficacy, follows as a function of age is yet researchable. The present study aimed at assessing how self-efficacy related to one’s ability on the cognitive process of verbal fluency changes with age. For this purpose, three groups with 12 participants in each group ie the young adults, middle-aged adults, and old-aged adults were subjected to letter fluency (LF)-flexibility and category fluency (CF)-flexibility tasks. In addition to performing the tasks, the participants of all groups did a pre-task prediction and a post-task judgment of their respective performances. The differences between predictions, judgments, and actual performances of all subjects were subjected to repeated measure ANOVA and post hoc paired T-test for each group. The results obtained revealed that the verbal fluency performance declined with the age. However, the self-efficacy for verbal fluency, measured by predictions and judgments, revealed that as the individuals grow old, they seem to become more aware of their limited performances. These results open the scope of studying metacognitive processes like self-efficacy on larger samples and variety of cognitive processes that may be significant for cognitive communicative assessment and intervention.

Effect of click stimuli and speech bursts on cortical processing

Late latency responses (LLR) are components of auditory evoked potential (AEP) responses that are found between 50 and 250 milliseconds from the time of stimulation and reflect the responses of the auditory cortex. LLR may be used for threshold estimation as well as to diagnose certain auditory deviations. In view of hardly any studies done on the comparison of LLR with different speech burst stimuli and click stimuli, this study was designed. A total of 12 (24 ears) normal hearing sensitivity subjects were included with no otologic or neurologic symptoms. LLR was recorded with speech burst stimuli /pa/, /ta/, /ka/ and click. All the components of LLR were elicited in all the participants with the click stimuli. Among speech burst stimuli, /ta/ stimulus was better than /pa/ and /ka/ stimuli in eliciting all the components of LLR. This difference could be attributed to the spectral energy present in the click stimuli. The difference in latencies when burst stimuli were used can be attributed to spectral differences, duration of stimulus and bandwidth. It can be concluded that the speech burst stimuli can be used to elicit cortical LLR, but responses will be more accurate with click stimuli. The result of this demonstrates the effect of stimulus variation on the LLR response pattern. LLR may be used to objectively measure differences in neural encoding and perception of spectrally different speech sounds.

Phonological Mean Length of Utterance in Children with Phonological Disorders

Abstract Aim: Although phonological mean length of utterance (pMLU) is addressed in normal children as well as those with specific language impairment and cochlear implanted children, there is poor focus on children with phonological disorders. Hence, the present study was carried out to determine the pMLU in children with phonological disorders in comparison with typically developing Kannada-speaking children. Methods: The study followed a case control design. Clinical group comprised 16 individuals (14 males and 2 females) with phonological disorders in the age range of 3 to 6 years. The control group comprised 30 age-matched children of whom 15 were males and 15 were females. A minimum of 50 spontaneous speech utterances were elicited from each child for a duration of 30 to 40 minutes which was audio-recorded. The childrens utterances were narrowly transcribed and pMLU was calculated for each child. The sum of each word in all the utterances were totaled and divided by the number of words produced by the child to obtain the pMLU scores. Results: Independent t-test was employed to compare the differences between the mean pMLU scores across both groups. The results revealed a statistically significant difference between the means of pMLU scores across the group at p <0.05. Conclusion: The results revealed that children with phonological disorder are inferior in the acquisition of segments as well as in their whole-word phonological proficiency than typically developing children. Hence, pMLU measure could be regarded as a yardstick for phonological development, and forms the basis of a developmental scale for comparison against disordered phonology.

Test-Retest Reliability of Vestibular Evoked Myogenic Potential across Different Age Groups

Background: VEMPs are used to evaluate the function of otolith system. cVEMP evaluate the function of saccule and oVEMP evaluate the function of utricle. There are equivocal findings in the test-retest reliability of cVEMP and oVEMP response among the young adults groups. Therefore, the present study was taken up to see test-retest reliability the test-retest reliability of cVEMPs (with and without integrated visual feedback system) and oVEMP parameters across different age groups. Method: A total of 60 participants were included among the three groups (young adult, middle adult and old adult) with an equal number of in each group. cVEMP and oVEMP were performed thrice for all the participants to see the test-retest reliability. Results: Present study results showed test-retest reliability was fair to good and above for all the parameters for cVEMP as well as oVEMP response. cVEMP peak to peak amplitude retest reliability with integrated visual feedback showed more reliability than without integrated visual feedback system in middle and old adults. Conclusion: It can be concluded from the current study that cVEMP and oVEMP testing procedures are reliable in the young, middle and old adult groups during and between test recordings.

Effect of Bhramari Pranayama on the Acoustic and Aerodynamic Parameters of Voice in Normophonic Females

Summary. Objective Pranayama is known for improving various health conditions. The present study is aimed at investigating the effects of bhramari pranayama on aerodynamic and acoustic parameters of voice in healthy individuals. Study Design This is a pretest-posttest design study. Methods A total of 24 participants in the age range of 20 to 25 years completed the bhramari pranayama regimen for 30 sessions. Aerodynamic and acoustic assessments were done before and after pranayama sessions. Maximum phonation duration, pitch, loudness, subglottal pressure, glottal airflow, laryngeal resistance and conductance along with acoustical parameters such as average F0, jitter, and shimmer, soft phonation index, noise to harmonic ratio, cepstral peak prominence, and smoothened cepstral peak prominence were analysed. Results The results revealed significant improvement in the maximum phonation duration, glottal airflow and pressure, average fundamental frequency, and cepstral peak prominence after practice suggesting that it has an effect on voice parameters. Conclusion Bhramari pranayama is effective in improving the acoustic and aerodynamic parameters of voice. The same needs to be investigated in hyper- and hypofunctional voice disorders in the future studies.