Frequency and rate discrimination by Menière patients

Discrimination tests were conducted for each ear of 6 patients with unilateral Menière's disease. Differential sensitivity to changes in pure-tone frequency (presumably containing temporal and place cues) was compared to differential sensitivity to changes in rate of sinusoidally amplitude-modulated noise (presumably containing only a temporal cue) at common low frequencies and modulation rates (less than 400 Hz). An adaptive forced-choice psychophysical procedure was used. The better-ear results for the Menière patients generally were similar to findings for normally hearing listeners. For the impaired ears, pure-tone frequency discrimination typically was impaired relatively more than was the rate discrimination up to 200 Hz. However, rate discrimination was difficult or impossible above 250-300 Hz. Absolute frequency difference limens (DLs) were, on average, smaller than or at least equivalent to absolute rate DLs. Moreover, frequency discrimination always was possible for the Menière patients.