Current models successfully describe the auditory cortical response to natural sounds with a set of spectro-temporal features. However, these models have hardly been linked to the ill-understood neurobiological changes that occur in the aging auditory cortex. Modelling the hemodynamic response to a rich natural sound mixture in N = 64 listeners of varying age, we here show that in older listeners’ auditory cortex, the key feature of temporal rate is represented with a markedly broader tuning. This loss of temporal selectivity is most prominent in primary auditory cortex and planum temporale, with no such changes in adjacent auditory or other brain areas. Amongst older listeners, we observe a direct relationship between chronological age and temporal-rate tuning, unconfounded by auditory acuity or model goodness of fit. In line with senescent neural dedifferentiation more generally, our results highlight decreased selectivity to temporal information as a hallmark of the aging auditory cortex.

中文翻译：

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老化的人类听觉皮层的时间选择性下降

当前模型成功地描述了对自然声音的听觉皮层反应，具有一组光谱时间特征。然而，这些模型几乎没有与衰老听觉皮层中发生的尚未被理解的神经生物学变化联系起来。在 N = 64 个不同年龄的听众中对丰富的自然声音混合物的血液动力学响应进行建模，我们在这里表明，在年长听众的听觉皮层中，时间速率的关键特征以明显更广泛的调谐表示。这种时间选择性的丧失在初级听觉皮层和颞叶中最为突出，相邻的听觉或其他大脑区域没有这种变化。在年长的听众中，我们观察到实际年龄和时间频率调整之间的直接关系，不受听觉敏锐度或模型拟合优度的影响。