Consequences of hearing aid acclimatization on ALLRs and its relationship with perceived benefit and speech perception abilities.

OBJECTIVE: The study aimed to track long latency responses over a period of hearing aid use in naïve hearing aid users, and study its relationship with change in speech perception abilities and perceived benefit.

METHODS: Thirty adults in the age range of 23-60 years with moderate sensorineural hearing loss participated in the study. Auditory late latency responses (ALLRs), signal-to-noise ratio - 50 (SNR-50), and scores of speech spatial and qualities questionnaire (SSQ) were measured three times over a period of 2 months of hearing aid use.

RESULTS: ALLRs showed a significant decrease in the P1 and N1 latency across the three measurements. Significant increase in the scores of SSQ and significant decrease in the SNR-50 were also found. The change in ALLRs did not correlate with change in scores of either SSQ or SNR-50.

CONCLUSIONS: The study provides evidence for improvements in neural processing of auditory cortical areas with hearing aid acclimatization. The improvements seen in perceived benefit and speech perception are not related to the improvements in ALLRs. This is the first study in the domain with a younger group compared to the previous studies and the results show evidence for neural plasticity influencing hearing aid acclimatization benefits.