Distortion-product emissions and auditory sensitivity in human ears with normal hearing and cochlear hearing loss

Distortion product emissions (DPEs) at 2f1-f2 frequencies were measured in 53 human ears; 21 of them exhibited cochlear hearing loss. DPEs were obtained as a function of stimulus level (DPE growth curves) at seven frequency regions between 707 Hz and 5656 Hz. Several distinctly different shapes or patterns of DPE growth curves were observed. These included single-segment monotonic growth curves with and without saturation at moderate and high stimulus levels, diphasic growth curves with nulls at moderate stimulus levels, and non-monotonic growth curves with negative slopes at high stimulus levels. Low-level, irregularly shaped segments were more frequent in normal-hearing ears, suggestive of normal low-level active nonlinearities from the outer-hair-cell subsystem. High-level, steeply sloped segments were frequent in hearing-impaired ears, suggestive of residual nonlinearities from a cochlear partition without functional outer hair cells. The stimulus level at which the DPE could just be distinguished from the noise floor, the DPE detection threshold, demonstrated moderate positive correlations (r's from 0.50 to 0.81) with auditory thresholds when all ears, both normal and impaired, were considered together. Those correlations were not strong enough to quantitatively predict auditory thresholds with any great accuracy. However, DPE thresholds were able to predict abnormal auditory sensitivity with some precision. DPE thresholds correctly predicted abnormal auditory sensitivity 79% of the time in the present study, and up to 96% of the time in previous studies. These results suggest that DPE thresholds may prove useful for hearing screening in cases where cooperation from the subject is limited or where corroboration of cochlear hearing loss is required. Different patterns of DPE growth curves suggest underlying micro-mechanical differences between ears, but the differential diagnostic value of those patterns remains to be determined.