Title: "Beyond the Audiogram: Data-Driven Insights to Precision Audiology"

Speaker: Varsha M. Athreya, Ph.D.

Speech perception in noise (SPIN) varies widely across individuals, even among those with similar pure-tone averages (PTA), highlighting a fundamental limitation of the most used metric in hearing care. While PTA offers a convenient summary of hearing sensitivity, it ignores audiometric configuration and has limited ability to predict real-world communication outcomes, hearing-aid benefit, and patient satisfaction.

To understand this individual variability in SPIN, we can take two complementary approaches: data-driven population science and mechanistic auditory processing. First, large-scale analyses of clinical data from over 70,000 patients show that clustering audiograms reveal clinically meaningful profiles that are obscured by PTA alone. These profiles exhibit distinct speech-in-noise performance despite similar PTAs, underscoring the need for richer representations of hearing capabilities in clinical workflows. Second, we briefly look into unique data-driven analyses of cortical neural measures in older adults with normal hearing. These analyses provide mechanistic insight into age-related variability in speech perception in noise. Together, these approaches illustrate how integrating scalable population analytics with targeted neural insights can move the field beyond PTA toward more predictive, personalized, and impactful hearing-care solutions.

Attendees are encouraged to join in person in HSAB 2004. Seating is limited (first-come, first-served, ~50 seats), but the seminar will also be available via Zoom.