Project Grant R21DC022030

This federal Project Grant award of $200,625 from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), under the Research Related to Deafness and Communication Disorders program (CFDA 93.173), will support research to investigate the neural mechanisms and clinical antecedents underlying listening difficulty in school-age children born very preterm.

The key objectives are to: 1) evaluate the neural mechanisms by which extended high-frequency hearing loss disrupts the integration of spatial and talker cues during competing speech processing, leading to listening difficulty in preterm children, and 2) determine the clinical antecedents, such as ototoxic medication exposure and abnormal MRI findings at term, that contribute to the development of listening difficulty and extended high-frequency hearing loss in this population. The research will leverage an existing cohort of over 300 very preterm infants with prospectively collected clinical data, as well as conduct audiological and neuroimaging assessments in a subset of preterm children and controls. Findings from this project are expected to lay the groundwork for developing targeted interventions and early identification strategies to enhance auditory and language outcomes for high-risk preterm children.