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Cingulo-opercular Activity Provides Word Recognition Benefit
Recognizing speech in challenging listening conditions often produces increased activity in frontal cortex, particularly in cingulo-opercular regions, but the significance of this activity has been unclear. This network of frontal cortex is thought to monitor performance and signal when cognitive resources are required to ensure successful performance. Findings from earlier visuospatial studies indicated that…
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Visual System Activity When Listening to Speech: Distracting or Helpful?
Aging is often associated with increased distractibility that may arise from a failure to adequately suppress the processing of irrelevant sensory information. In our recent Cerebral Cortex paper, we show that decreasing word intelligibility was associated with increasing visual cortex activity in younger, middle-aged, and older adults. In addition, age was related visual cortex activity:…
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Age-related differences in auditory gap detection predicted by cognitive processing speed
Changes in auditory temporal processing are thought to be one reason why older adults have difficulty recognizing speech, especially in difficult listening conditions. Dr. Kelly Harris reports in the journal Hearing Research that changes in auditory temporal processing can be explained, in part, by changes in cognitive processing speed. Processing speed is the rate at…