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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Tim GriffithsORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND).
© 2025 The Authors.Auditory grouping relies on the ability to bind tones with coherent spectral features over time to form auditory objects. Sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) degrades spectral resolution, and the extent of this degradation varies with the hearing configuration. However, it remains unclear how SNHL impacts auditory grouping and whether different hearing configurations affect this ability. This study investigated task performance and cortical activity during auditory object detection in four groups with different hearing configurations: Twenty normal-hearing (NH) listeners, seventeen bilateral hearing aid users with acoustic-only stimulation (A-only), thirty-one cochlear implant (CI) users with acoustic and electric stimulation ( A + E ), and seventeen bilateral CI users with electric-only stimulation (E-only). While electroencephalography was recorded, participants performed a stochastic figure-ground task requiring the detection of spectrally and temporally coherent tone pips embedded in a background of random-frequency tone clouds. Sensitivity to the task was high across groups, although CI groups showed poorer performance compared to NH and A-only groups. Relative to NH listeners, the object-related evoked responses were weaker in A-only listeners and absent in CI groups. Delta (2–3.5 Hz) and theta (4–7 Hz) event-related synchronization to the auditory objects were only observed in the NH group, except for the A + E group, which showed a delta synchronization. However, all groups exhibited alpha (8–15 Hz) and beta (17–30 Hz) event-related desynchronization, with no significant group differences. Notably, individual differences in alpha and beta desynchronization predicted task sensitivity. These findings suggest that alpha and beta cortical activity, measured during an auditory object detection task, reflects auditory grouping in any hearing configuration.
Author(s): Alsabbagh N, McMurray B, Griffiths TD, Berger JI, Lee K, Gander PE, Choi I
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: NeuroImage
Year: 2025
Volume: 323
Print publication date: 25/11/2025
Online publication date: 19/11/2025
Acceptance date: 18/11/2025
Date deposited: 08/12/2025
ISSN (print): 1053-8119
ISSN (electronic): 1095-9572
Publisher: Academic Press Inc.
URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2025.121597
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2025.121597
Data Access Statement: The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors, P.G & I.C, upon reasonable request
PubMed id: 41270846
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