Estimation of hair cell loss from audiograms

Age-related hearing loss arises from multiple cochlear pathologies. However, linking audiometric thresholds to their underlying cellular mechanisms remains a challenge. We present a biophysically grounded framework linking audiograms to the survival of inner and outer hair cells (IHCs and OHCs) along the cochlear partition. This approach uses a nonlinear, time-domain model of the peripheral auditory system, integrating cochlear mechanics, hair-cell transduction, and auditory-nerve responses. Using postmortem human data combining audiograms and histological hair-cell counts (Wu et al., 2020), we show that audiograms can be predicted from the spatial distribution of surviving hair cells. Prediction is most accurate at low frequencies and becomes less accurate toward the high frequencies. We further examine how well audiograms can reveal the underlying pattern of hair-cell loss. A key finding is that OHC dysfunction primarily affects high-frequency thresholds. Reduced OHC function alters cochlear mechanics, including cochlear amplification, the location of maximal basilar membrane response, and cochlear tuning. These effects are most pronounced in the basal cochlear region, making the audiogram primarily sensitive to the overall level of OHC dysfunction rather than to the detailed spatial distribution of OHC survival. These findings indicate that audiograms provide partial information about cochlear pathology. They are more sensitive to IHC dysfunction and to OHC-related changes in the high-frequency region. The proposed framework establishes a quantitative link between audiometric measures and underlying cellular damage. It also highlights the limitations of inferring detailed cochlear pathology solely from threshold data.