Cortical evoked potentials (CAEP) with speech and noise stimuli in young adults and adults over 50 years of age

CAEP are not only a useful tool for objective measurement of hearing thresholds for complex stimuli, but they also allow gaining information on the integrity of the thalamo-cortical auditory pathway. As a part of the aging process, morphological and functional changes of the cochlea, the auditory nerve and the central auditory pathway will lead to the development of a slowly progressive hearing loss. To evaluate such changes, the latencies and morphology of the CAEP after different syllable and noise stimuli were investigated in normal-hearing young adults and adults older than 50 years.