Mild Traumatic Brain Injury: Long-Term Follow-Up of Central Auditory Processing After Auditory Training

Abstract

Background and Objectives: Even a mild traumatic brain injury can impair the peripheraland central parts of the auditory system. The objective was to compare the performance ofindividuals with mild traumatic brain injury in behavioral and electrophysiological central auditorytests before and after formal auditory training, and to verify the stability of these measuresover time. Subjects and Methods: Ten 16 to 64-year-old individuals diagnosed with mildtraumatic brain injury underwent behavioral and electrophysiological assessment of the centralauditory processing in three stages: before, right after, and six months after formal auditorytraining. Results: Statistically significant differences were observed for speech by white noise,synthetic sentence identification, sound localization, verbal sequential memory, and durationpattern tests in the assessment six months after formal auditory training. No statistically significantdifferences were observed between the P300 assessments, either with tone-burst orspeech stimulus, in N2 and P3 latencies, and P3 amplitude. Conclusions: The results of thebehavioral assessment of the central auditory processing improved, while the P300 remainedstable with both stimuli, six months after completing formal auditory training. This demonstratesthat auditory training has long-term benefits for people with mild traumatic brain injury.