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Cochlear compression: perceptual measures and implications for normal and impaired hearing.
Andrew J Oxenham1, Sid P Bacon
1Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139-4307, USA. oxenham@mit.edu
Ear and Hearing
|October 10, 2003
Summary
Cochlear nonlinearity significantly impacts how we perceive sound. Loss of this nonlinearity, due to outer hair cell damage, alters auditory perception and speech understanding in hearing-impaired individuals.
Area of Science:
- Auditory Neuroscience
- Psychoacoustics
Background:
- The healthy mammalian basilar membrane (BM) exhibits sharp tuning, high nonlinearity, and compressive response to sound.
- Damage to outer hair cells (OHCs) alters BM response, leading to broader tuning and linearity.
Purpose of the Study:
- To review how cochlear nonlinearity affects sound perception.
- To understand how loss of cochlear nonlinearity in hearing impairment changes sound perception.
Main Methods:
- Review of recent developments in understanding cochlear function and hearing impairment.
- Analysis of how changes in basilar membrane response influence auditory perception.
Main Results:
- Differences in auditory perception between normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners correlate with changes in BM response.
- Effects include poorer audiometric thresholds, loudness recruitment, reduced frequency selectivity, and altered temporal processing.
- These perceptual changes impact speech understanding, especially in noisy environments.
Conclusions:
- Cochlear nonlinearity plays a crucial role in normal sound perception.
- Behavioral methods to estimate cochlear nonlinearity may aid in identifying hearing loss mechanisms and improving hearing aid fitting.
- Developing accurate and efficient clinical measures for cochlear nonlinearity remains a challenge.