Revealing deterministic structures in click-evoked otoacoustic emissions

Click-evoked otoacoustic emissions (CEOAEs) were studied by means of recurrence quantification analysis (RQA) and were found to be endowed with a relevant amount of deterministic structuring. Such a structure showed highly significant correlation with the clinical evaluation of the signal over a data set including 56 signals. Moreover, 1) one of the RQA variables, Trend, was very sensitive to phase transitions in the dynamical regime of CEOAEs, and 2) appropriate use of principal component analysis proved able to isolate the individual character of the studied signals. These results are of general interest for the study of auditory signal transduction and generation mechanisms.