An, Hyunjung Lee, Jeewon Suh, Myung-Whan Lim, Yoonseob 2024-01-19T08:31:30Z 2024-01-19T08:31:30Z 2023-11-08 2023-10 1662-4548 https://pubs.kist.re.kr/handle/201004/113180 Everyday speech communication often occurs in environments with background noise, and the impact of noise on speech recognition can vary depending on factors such as noise type, noise intensity, and the listener's hearing ability. However, the extent to which neural mechanisms in speech understanding are influenced by different types and levels of noise remains unknown. This study aims to investigate whether individuals exhibit distinct neural responses and attention strategies depending on noise conditions. We recorded electroencephalography (EEG) data from 20 participants with normal hearing (13 males) and evaluated both neural tracking of speech envelopes and behavioral performance in speech understanding in the presence of varying types of background noise. Participants engaged in an EEG experiment consisting of two separate sessions. The first session involved listening to a 12-min story presented binaurally without any background noise. In the second session, speech understanding scores were measured using matrix sentences presented under speech-shaped noise (SSN) and Story noise background noise conditions at noise levels corresponding to sentence recognitions score (SRS). We observed differences in neural envelope correlation depending on noise type but not on its level. Interestingly, the impact of noise type on the variation in envelope tracking was more significant among participants with higher speech perception scores, while those with lower scores exhibited similarities in envelope correlation regardless of the noise condition. The findings suggest that even individuals with normal hearing could adopt different strategies to understand speech in challenging listening environments, depending on the type of noise. English Frontiers Media S.A. Neural correlation of speech envelope tracking for background noise in normal hearing Article 10.3389/fnins.2023.1268591 1 Frontiers in Neuroscience, v.17 Frontiers in Neuroscience 17 Y scie scopus 001089648500001 Neurosciences Neurosciences & Neurology Article PERCEPTION MASKING ENTRAINMENT SPATIAL SEPARATION background noise type informational masking energetic masking speech understanding in noise electroencephalography neural decoding