Bridging the brain structure—brain function gap in prosodic speech processing in older adults

Age-related decline in speech perception may result in difficulties partaking in spoken conversation and potentially lead to social isolation and cognitive decline in older adults. It is therefore important to better understand how age-related differences in neurostructural factors such as cortical thickness (CT) and cortical surface area (CSA) are related to neurophysiological sensitivity to speech cues in younger and older adults. Age-related differences in CT and CSA of bilateral auditory-related areas were extracted using FreeSurfer in younger and older adults with normal peripheral hearing. Behavioral and neurophysiological sensitivity to prosodic speech cues (word stress and fundamental frequency of oscillation) was evaluated using discrimination tasks and a passive oddball paradigm, while EEG was recorded, to quantify mismatch negativity responses. Results revealed (a) higher neural sensitivity (i.e., larger mismatch negativity responses) to word stress in older adults compared to younger adults, suggesting a higher importance of prosodic speech cues in the speech processing of older adults, and (b) lower CT in auditory-related regions in older compared to younger individuals, suggesting neuronal loss associated with aging. Within the older age group, less neuronal loss (i.e., higher CT) in a right auditory-related area (i.e., the supratemporal sulcus) was related to better performance in fundamental frequency discrimination, while higher CSA in left auditory-related areas was associated with higher neural sensitivity toward prosodic speech cues as evident in the mismatch negativity patterns. Overall, our results offer evidence for neurostructural changes in aging that are associated with differences in the extent to which left and right auditory-related areas are involved in speech processing in older adults. We argue that exploring age-related differences in brain structure and function associated with decline in speech perception in older adults may help develop much needed rehabilitation strategies for older adults with central age-related hearing loss.