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Updated: Feb 6, 2026

Stochastic Noise Application for the Assessment of Medial Vestibular Nucleus Neuron Sensitivity In Vitro
Published on: August 28, 2019
Adversarial relationship between combined medial olivocochlear (MOC) and middle-ear-muscle (MEM) reflexes and
Buddhika Karunarathne1, Tingyi Wang1, Richard H Y So1
1HKUST-Shenzhen Research Institute, Shenzhen, 518057, China; Department of Industrial Engineering and Decision Analytics, Clearwater Bay, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China.
Abstract:
The role of auditory efferent feedback from the medial olivocochlear system (MOCS) and the middle-ear-muscle (MEM) reflex in tonal detection tasks for humans in the presence of noise is not clearly understood. Past studies have yielded inconsistent results on the relationship between efferent feedback and tonal detection thresholds. This study attempts to address this inconsistency. Fifteen human subjects with normal hearing participated in an experiment where they were asked to identify an alarm signal in the presence of 80 dBA background (pink) noise. Masked detection thresholds were estimated using the method of two-interval forced choice (2IFC). Contralateral suppression of transient-evoked otoacoustic emissions (TEOAEs) was measured to estimate the strength of auditory efferent feedback. Subsequent correlation analysis revealed that the contralateral suppression of TEOAEs was significantly negatively correlated (r = -0.526, n = 15, p = 0.0438) with alarm-in-noise (AIN) detection thresholds under negative signal-to-noise conditions. The result implies that the stronger the auditory efferent feedback, the worse the detection thresholds and thus the poorer the tonal detection performance in the presence of loud noise.
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