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Temporal integration and compression near absolute threshold in normal and impaired ears
Christopher J Plack1, Vicki Skeels
1Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, Lancaster, LA1 4YF, United Kingdom. c.plack@lancaster.ac.uk
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
|October 2, 2007
Summary
Listeners with normal hearing integrate sound duration better than those with hearing loss. This study found that differences in temporal integration are not explained by basilar-membrane compression in sensorineural hearing loss.
Area of Science:
- Auditory Neuroscience
- Psychoacoustics
- Audiology
Background:
- Temporal integration, the decrease in absolute threshold with increasing stimulus duration, is reduced in individuals with sensorineural hearing loss compared to those with normal hearing.
- Reduced basilar-membrane (BM) compression has been hypothesized to explain this difference in temporal integration.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the relationship between temporal integration and basilar-membrane (BM) compression in normal-hearing and sensorineural hearing-impaired ears.
- To test the hypothesis that reduced BM compression underlies diminished temporal integration in hearing impairment.
Main Methods:
- Absolute hearing thresholds were measured for pure-tone signals of varying durations (4, 24, and 44 ms) at 2 and 4 kHz.
- Basilar-membrane (BM) compression was estimated using a forward masking paradigm with an off-frequency masker.
- Temporal integration was quantified as the difference in absolute thresholds between 4 ms and 24 ms signals.
Main Results:
- A significant negative correlation was observed between the amount of temporal integration and absolute hearing threshold.
- No correlation was found between absolute hearing threshold and the degree of basilar-membrane (BM) compression at low stimulus levels.
- Both normal-hearing and hearing-impaired ears exhibited a nearly linear response in terms of BM compression near threshold.
Conclusions:
- The observed differences in temporal integration between normal and impaired hearing cannot be attributed to variations in basilar-membrane (BM) compression.
- Alternative mechanisms may be responsible for the reduced temporal integration observed in individuals with sensorineural hearing loss.
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