Auditory brainstem signals track age-related hearing deficits
In normal-hearing listeners, auditory brainstem responses and behavioral detection thresholds revealed that declining Wave V amplitudes correlated with poorer temporal processing at higher sound levels.
bioRxiv
In normal-hearing human listeners, age-related declines in central auditory processing emerge under challenging acoustic conditions, according to a preprint on bioRxiv. Researchers tested how aging and sound levels interact during auditory temporal processing. They evaluated participants using a forward-masking paradigm, recording auditory brainstem responses alongside behavioral detection thresholds across varying masker sound levels, including those above conversational volume. As participant age and masker sound levels rose, Wave V amplitudes in the auditory brainstem response decreased. Furthermore, these amplitude drops directly correlated with participants' behavioral detection thresholds for probe stimuli under forward masking. The findings indicate that central auditory temporal processing degrades with age despite standard audiometric thresholds, especially as background sound levels increase.
Why it matters
The findings show that sensory aging alters neural temporal processing in the central auditory system even when clinical audiometry indicates normal hearing. This provides a physiological basis for why older adults often struggle to process sound in complex, loud environments.
Caveats
As a preprint, this work has not yet completed formal peer review. The study relies on observational measures, and the abstract does not report the total sample size or participant age ranges.
The paper
Chinese University of Hong Kong · University of Maryland, College Park
bioRxiv · 25 Sep 2026 · Preprint, not peer-reviewed