JARO - Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology This is an RSS file. You can use it to subscribe to this data in your favourite RSS reader or to display this data on your own website or blog.

Dimensionally Specific Attention Capture in Birds Performing Auditory Streaming Task
AbstractPrevious studies in budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus) have indicated that they experience attention capture in a qualitatively similar way to humans. Here, we apply a similar objective auditory streaming paradigm, using modified budgerigar vocalizations instead of ABAB- … patterned pure tones, in the sound sequences. The birds were trained to respond to deviants in the target stream while ignoring the distractors in the background stream. The background distractor could vary among five different categories and two different sequential positions, while the target deviants could randomly appear at five differen...
Source: JARO - Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology - January 6, 2022 Category: ENT & OMF Source Type: research

Characterizing Polarity Sensitivity in Cochlear Implant Recipients: Demographic Effects and Potential Implications for Estimating Neural Health
AbstractStimulus polarity can affect both physiological and perceptual measures in cochlear-implant recipients. Large differences between polarities for various outcome measures (e.g., eCAP threshold, amplitude, or slope) theoretically reflect poorer neural health, whereas smaller differences reflect better neural health. Therefore, we expect large polarity effects to be correlated with other measures shown to contribute to poor neural health, such as advanced age or prolonged deafness. Our earlier studies using the electrically evoked compound action potential (eCAP) demonstrated differences in polarity effects between us...
Source: JARO - Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology - January 6, 2022 Category: ENT & OMF Source Type: research

Advantages of Pulse Rate Compared to Modulation Frequency for Temporal Pitch Perception in Cochlear Implant Users
AbstractMost cochlear implants encode the fundamental frequency of periodic sounds by amplitude modulation of constant-rate pulsatile stimulation. Pitch perception provided by such stimulation strategies is markedly poor. Two experiments are reported here that consider potential advantages of pulse rate compared to modulation frequency for providing stimulation timing cues for pitch. The first experiment examines beat frequency distortion that occurs when modulating constant-rate pulsatile stimulation. This distortion has been reported on previously, but the results presented here indicate that distortion occurs for higher...
Source: JARO - Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology - January 3, 2022 Category: ENT & OMF Source Type: research

Whistling While it Works: Spontaneous Otoacoustic Emissions and the Cochlear Amplifier
AbstractPerhaps the most striking evidence for active processes operating within the inner ears of mammals and non-mammals alike is their ability to spontaneously produce sound. Predicted by Thomas Gold in 1948, some 30 years prior to their discovery, the narrow-band sounds now known as spontaneous otoacoustic emissions (SOAEs) remain incompletely understood, their origins controversial. Without a single equation in the main text, we review the essential concepts underlying the “local-” and “global-oscillator” frameworks for understanding SOAE generation. Comparing their key assumptions and predictions, we relate t...
Source: JARO - Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology - January 3, 2022 Category: ENT & OMF Source Type: research

A Once-Daily High Dose of Intraperitoneal Ascorbate Improves Vestibulo-ocular Reflex Compensation After Unilateral Labyrinthectomy in the Mouse
AbstractAscorbate potentiates the response of nicotinic-acetylcholine-receptors containing α9 and α10 subunits found predominantly in the efferent systems of the inner ear, such as the efferent vestibular system (EVS). Prior mouse studies have shown that an attenuated EVS results in reduced vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR) gain (=eye_velocity/head_velocity) plasticity in intact (VOR adapta tion) and surgically-lesioned (VOR compensation) mice. We sought to determine whether ascorbate-treatment could improve VOR recovery after vestibular organ injury, possibly through potentiation of the EVS pathway. We tested 10 cba129 mice...
Source: JARO - Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology - January 3, 2022 Category: ENT & OMF Source Type: research

Cortical Processing of Binaural Cues as Shown by EEG Responses to Random-Chord Stereograms
AbstractSpatial hearing facilitates the perceptual organization of complex soundscapes into accurate mental representations of sound sources in the environment. Yet, the role of binaural cues in auditory scene analysis (ASA) has received relatively little attention in recent neuroscientific studies employing novel, spectro-temporally complex stimuli. This may be because a stimulation paradigm that provides binaurally derived grouping cues of sufficient spectro-temporal complexity has not yet been established for neuroscientific ASA experiments. Random-chord stereograms (RCS) are a class of auditory stimuli that exploit spe...
Source: JARO - Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology - December 13, 2021 Category: ENT & OMF Source Type: research

Reweighting of Binaural Localization Cues in Bilateral Cochlear-Implant Listeners
AbstractNormal-hearing (NH) listeners rely on two binaural cues, the interaural time (ITD) and level difference (ILD), for azimuthal sound localization. Cochlear-implant (CI) listeners, however, rely almost entirely on ILDs. One reason is that present-day clinical CI stimulation strategies do not convey salient ITD cues. But even when presenting ITDs under optimal conditions using a research interface, ITD sensitivity is lower in CI compared to NH listeners. Since it has recently been shown that NH listeners change their ITD/ILD weighting when only one of the cues is consistent with visual information, such reweighting mig...
Source: JARO - Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology - November 23, 2021 Category: ENT & OMF Source Type: research

Strain Comparison in Rats Differentiates Strain-Specific from More General Correlates of Noise-Induced Hearing Loss and Tinnitus
AbstractExperiments in rodent animal models help to reveal the characteristics and underlying mechanisms of pathologies related to hearing loss such as tinnitus or hyperacusis. However, a reliable understanding is still lacking. Here, four different rat strains (Sprague Dawley, Wistar, Long Evans, and Lister Hooded) underwent comparative analysis of electrophysiological (auditory brainstem responses, ABRs) and behavioral measures after noise trauma induction to differentiate between strain-dependent trauma effects and more consistent changes across strains, such as frequency dependence or systematic temporal changes. Sever...
Source: JARO - Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology - November 18, 2021 Category: ENT & OMF Source Type: research

Sensitivity to Envelope Interaural Time Differences: Modeling Auditory Modulation Filtering
AbstractFor amplitude-modulated sound, the envelope interaural time difference (ITDENV) is a potential cue for sound-source location. ITDENV is encoded in the lateral superior olive (LSO) of the auditory brainstem, by excitatory-inhibitory (EI) neurons receiving ipsilateral excitation and contralateral inhibition. Between human listeners, sensitivity to ITDENV varies considerably, but ultimately decreases with increasing stimulus carrier frequency, and decreases more strongly with increasing modulation rate. Mechanisms underlying the variation in behavioral sensitivity remain unclear. Here, with increasing carrier frequenc...
Source: JARO - Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology - November 5, 2021 Category: ENT & OMF Source Type: research

Access and Polarization Electrode Impedance Changes in Electric-Acoustic Stimulation Cochlear Implant Users with Delayed Loss of Acoustic Hearing
AbstractAcoustic hearing can be preserved after cochlear implant (CI) surgery, allowing for combined electric-acoustic stimulation (EAS) and superior speech understanding compared to electric-only hearing. Among patients who initially retain useful acoustic hearing, 30 –40 % experience a delayed hearing loss that occurs 3 or more months after CI activation. Increases in electrode impedances have been associated with delayed loss of residual acoustic hearing, suggesting a possible role of intracochlear inflammation/fibrosis as reported by Scheperle et al. (Hear R es 350:45–57,2017) and Shaul et al. (Otol Neurotol  40(...
Source: JARO - Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology - October 22, 2021 Category: ENT & OMF Source Type: research

Too Blind to See the Elephant? Why Neuroscientists Ought to Be Interested in Tinnitus
AbstractA curative therapy for tinnitus currently does not exist. One may actually exist but cannot currently be causally linked to tinnitus due to the lack of consistency of concepts about the neural correlate of tinnitus. Depending on predictions, these concepts would require either a suppression or enhancement of brain activity or an increase in inhibition or disinhibition. Although procedures with a potential to silence tinnitus may exist, the lack of rationale for their curative success hampers an optimization of therapeutic protocols. We discuss here six candidate contributors to tinnitus that have been suggested by ...
Source: JARO - Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology - October 22, 2021 Category: ENT & OMF Source Type: research

The Elusive Cochlear Filter: Wave Origin of Cochlear Cross-Frequency Masking
AbstractThe mammalian cochlea achieves its remarkable sensitivity, frequency selectivity, and dynamic range by spatially segregating the different frequency components of sound via nonlinear processes that remain only partially understood. As a consequence of the wave-based nature of cochlear processing, the different frequency components of complex sounds interact spatially and nonlinearly, mutually suppressing one another as they propagate. Because understanding nonlinear wave interactions and their effects on hearing appears to require mathematically complex or computationally intensive models, theories of hearing that ...
Source: JARO - Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology - October 22, 2021 Category: ENT & OMF Source Type: research

Cochlear Immune Response in Presbyacusis: a Focus on Dysregulation of Macrophage Activity
AbstractAge-related hearing loss, or presbyacusis, is a prominent chronic degenerative disorder that affects many older people. Based on presbyacusis pathology, the degeneration occurs in both sensory and non-sensory cells, along with changes in the cochlear microenvironment. The progression of age-related neurodegenerative diseases is associated with an altered microenvironment that reflects chronic inflammatory signaling. Under these conditions, resident and recruited immune cells, such as microglia/macrophages, have aberrant activity that contributes to chronic neuroinflammation and neural cell degeneration. Recently, r...
Source: JARO - Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology - October 12, 2021 Category: ENT & OMF Source Type: research

Cochlear Pathomorphogenesis of Incomplete Partition Type II in Slc26a4-Null Mice
The objective of this study was to characterize the pathomorphogenesis of the IP-II cochlear anomaly inSlc26a4-null mice. Otic capsules were dissected fromSlc26a4Δ/+ andSlc26a4Δ/Δ mice at 1 and 8  days of age and at 1 and 3 months of age. X-ray micro-computed tomography was used to image samples. We used a multiplanar view and three-dimensional reconstructed models to calculate the cochlear duct length, cochlear turn rotation angle, and modiolus tilt angle. The number of inner hair cells w as counted, and the length of the cochlear duct was measured in a whole-mount preparation of the membranous labyrinth. X-ray micro...
Source: JARO - Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology - October 7, 2021 Category: ENT & OMF Source Type: research

Correction to: Characteristics of the Deconvolved Transient AEP from 80  Hz Steady‑State Responses to Amplitude Modulation Stimulation
(Source: JARO - Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology)
Source: JARO - Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology - October 7, 2021 Category: ENT & OMF Source Type: research