Impaired auditory selective attention ameliorated by cognitive training with graded exposure to noise in patients with traumatic brain injury

摘要: Patients who suffer traumatic brain injury frequently report difficulty concentrating on tasks and completing routine activities in noisy distracting environments. Such impairments can have long-term negative psychosocial consequences. A cognitive control function that may underlie this impairment is the capacity to select a goal-relevant signal for further processing while safeguarding it from irrelevant noise. paradigmatic investigation of problem was undertaken using dichotic listening task (study 1) which comprehension stream speech one ear measured context increasing interference second other ear. Controls showed an initial decline performance presence competing but thereafter adaptation audibility speech, even at highest levels By contrast, patients linear with Subsequently attempts were made ameliorate deficit 2) training procedure based attention process (APT) included graded exposure noise over course training. assigned adaptive non-adaptive schedules or no-training group. Results both types drove improvements naturalistic Improvements also seen measures selective visual domain suggesting transfer We observed augmentation event-related potentials (ERPs) linked target (P3b) no change ERPs evoked by distractor stimuli (P3a) heightened tuning signals, as opposed gating No changes any above Together these findings present ecologically valid approach measure difficulties after injury, provide means deficits.