Hung-Shao Cheng, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Trainee in the Waisman Center Speech Motor Neuroscience Group
Dept. of Communication Sciences & Disorders
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Speech sensorimotor adaptation is preserved in healthy aging
Sensorimotor adaptation, learning from errors in sensory feedback, is increasingly positioned as a potential motor learning mechanism to be leveraged to drive behaviorally-relevant changes in speech that may improve speech intelligibility. However, one barrier for translating sensorimotor adaptation from laboratories to clinics is that individuals with acquired motor speech disorders who may benefit from such interventions are generally older than the typical age range that past studies of speech sensorimotor adaptation focuses on, and it is possible that aging may impact sensorimotor adaptation potentially due to age-related influences on sensory acuity and motor control ability. In this talk, I will present a study that examined 1) age effects on auditory and somatosensory acuity and 2) the extent to which age, sensory acuity, and/or motor variability predicted adaptation. Results indicate that despite age-related declines in hearing thresholds and tactile acuity of the tongue, older adults were associated with better vowel formant discrimination acuity. Critically, aging did not affect the magnitude of adaptation to the non-uniform formant perturbation. Participants with less motor variability were associated with larger adaptation. These findings support the feasibility that sensorimotor adaptation can be leveraged to drive behaviorally-relevant changes in speech in older adults.