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Abstract
Objective: Speech evoked auditory brainstem responses (spABRs) provide a window to understand the neurophysiological processing of speech in the brain. The temporal and spectral characteristics of speech sounds are faithfully represented in the subcortical responses; thus, these responses can be used to assess specific impairments in auditory processing. However, the spABRs are known to be affected by the acoustic properties of speech, language experience and training. Hence, the establishment of language specific speech stimuli is warranted for brainstem processing. The objective of the study was to develop Hindi speech stimuli for brainstem response recordings. Study design: The Hindi stop-voiced and voiceless phoneme of CV combination of 40 ms was synthesized. The behavioural identification score and discrimination ability of the selected stimuli were obtained from children (6–13 years) and adults (18–25 years) with normal hearing (NH) and moderate sensorineural hearing loss (HI). Brainstem evoked responses to stimulus |da| were gained from normal hearing and hearing impaired adults. Results: The identification and discrimination scores of stimuli between NH and HI children and adults were calculated. Statistically significant differences in the mean identification scores of synthesized speech stimuli were obtained. The mean, median, standard deviation, minimum, maximum and 95% confidence interval values of electrophysiological responses to speech stimulus were measured for the discrete peaks and V-A complex for both the groups. Conclusion: This article has delineated a comprehensive methodological approach for the development of Hindi speech stimuli and the recording of auditory brain stem responses to speech stimuli. The acoustic characteristic of the stimulus |da| was faithfully represented at brainstem level in normal hearing adults and found to be statistically different from HI individuals. This suggests that spABR offers an opportunity to segregate normal speech encoding from abnormal speech processing and implies that alterations in brainstem responses could have clinical significance for the identification of subjects with possible speech processing disorders.
Acknowledgements
The authors sincerely thank the participants and parents for their patience and valuable time.
Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.
Supplementary material available online
Supplementary Appendix to be found online at http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/21695717.2015.1069062