School of Medicine Publications and Presentations
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
8-24-2022
Abstract
Communicating in everyday situations requires solving the cocktail-party problem, or segregating the acoustic mixture into its constituent sounds and attending to those of most interest. Humans show dramatic variation in this ability, leading some to experience real-world problems irrespective of whether they meet criteria for clinical hearing loss. Here, we estimated the genetic contribution to cocktail-party listening by measuring speech-reception thresholds (SRTs) in 425 people from large families and ranging in age from 18 to 91 years. Roughly half the variance of SRTs was explained by genes (h 2 = 0.567). The genetic correlation between SRTs and hearing thresholds (HTs) was medium (ρ G = 0.392), suggesting that the genetic factors influencing cocktail-party listening were partially distinct from those influencing sound sensitivity. Aging and socioeconomic status also strongly influenced SRTs. These findings may represent a first step toward identifying genes for "hidden hearing loss," or hearing problems in people with normal HTs.
Recommended Citation
Mathias, S. R., Knowles, E., Mollon, J., Rodrigue, A. L., Woolsey, M. K., Hernandez, A. M., Garrett, A. S., Fox, P. T., Olvera, R. L., Peralta, J. M., Kumar, S., Göring, H., Duggirala, R., Curran, J. E., Blangero, J., & Glahn, D. C. (2022). The Genetic contribution to solving the cocktail-party problem. iScience, 25(9), 104997. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2022.104997
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Publication Title
iScience
DOI
10.1016/j.isci.2022.104997
Academic Level
faculty
Mentor/PI Department
Office of Human Genetics
Comments
© 2022 The Author(s).