Animal studies demonstrate that noise exposure can permanently damage the synapses
between inner hair cells and auditory nerve fibers, even when outer hair cells are intact and …

Olivocochlear efferents allow the central auditory system to adjust the functioning of the
inner ear during active and passive listening. While many aspects of efferent anatomy …

Recent work suggests that hair cells are not the most vulnerable elements in the inner ear;
rather, it is the synapses between hair cells and cochlear nerve terminals that degenerate …

Clinical audiometry has long focused on determining the detection thresholds for pure tones,
which depend on intact cochlear mechanics and hair cell function. Yet many listeners with …

Evidence from animal and human studies suggests that moderate acoustic exposure,
causing only transient threshold elevation, can nonetheless cause “hidden hearing loss” that …

Many listeners with hearing thresholds within the clinically normal range nonetheless
complain of difficulty hearing in everyday settings and understanding speech in noise …

Aging listeners, even in the absence of overt hearing loss measured as changes in hearing
thresholds, often experience impairments processing temporally complex sounds such as …

Objectives: To determine whether suprathreshold measures of auditory function, such as
distortion-product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAEs) and auditory brainstem responses …

In rodents, noise exposure can destroy synapses between inner hair cells and auditory
nerve fibers (“cochlear synaptopathy”) without causing hair cell loss. Noise-induced …

In social settings, speech waveforms from nearby speakers mix together in our ear canals.
Normally, the brain unmixes the attended speech stream from the chorus of background …