fNIRs, Listening Effort, and Speech Intelligibility

Functional Near-infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) as a Measure of Listening Effort and Speech Intelligibility in Adults With Hearing Loss

Status

UNKNOWN

Phases

Study type

Interventional

Source

ClinicalTrials.gov

Registry ID

NCT05330585

Enrollment

Registered

2022-04-15

Start date

2022-05-03

Completion date

2022-12-31

Last updated

2022-09-13

For informational purposes only — not medical advice. Sourced from public registries and may not reflect the latest updates. Terms

Conditions

Hearing Loss

Brief summary

The purpose of the current study is to measure oxygenation in the PFC using fNIRS in a sample of older adults with hearing loss. Adults with hearing loss will be asked to repeat the final word from low-context sentences in noise at two SNRs; a hard SNR (individually-measured SNR-50), and an easy SNR (SNR-50 + 10 dB) both without and with hearing aids set to a directional mode. The procedure will be a within-subject repeated measures. Stimuli will be randomized.

Detailed description

See above.

Interventions

DEVICEHearing aids

Participants will listen to stimuli in the environment while wearing hearing aids which should make the stimuli more audible. Speech in noise performance is expected to improve and PFC oxygenation is expected to be reduced in this condition.

OTHERUnaided

Participants will listen to stimuli in the environment with their hearing loss. Speech in noise performance is expected to decline and PFC oxygenation is expected to be increased in this condition.

Study design

Allocation

Intervention model

SINGLE_GROUP

Primary purpose

BASIC_SCIENCE

Masking

NONE

Eligibility

Sex/Gender

ALL

Age

18 Years to 99 Years

Healthy volunteers

Inclusion criteria

* Adults (18-99 years) with ≥3 months hearing aid experience * binaural, symmetric, sensorineural N2 (mild) to N6 (severe) hearing loss * fluent in English

Exclusion criteria

* children/teenagers * normal hearing or hearing loss exceeding N6 (severe) by 10 dB

Design outcomes

Primary

Measure	Time frame	Description
Listening effort	Up to 2 hours during 1 session	Listening effort inferred from infrared light scattered from the prefrontal cortex, which is indicative of concentration of oxygenated blood in that region. A higher concentration is indicative of more listening effort.
Speech-in-noise performance	Up to 2 hours during 1 session	Number of words repeatedly correctly for a given listening condition.

Countries

Canada

Outcome results

None listed

Source: ClinicalTrials.gov · Data processed: Feb 4, 2026