Early temporary asymmetrical hearing impairs behavioral and neural sensitivity to sound location

Journal article

Kelsey L. Anbuhl, D. Tollin
2018

Cite

APA Click to copy
Anbuhl, K. L., & Tollin, D. (2018). Early temporary asymmetrical hearing impairs behavioral and neural sensitivity to sound location.

Chicago/Turabian Click to copy
Anbuhl, Kelsey L., and D. Tollin. “Early Temporary Asymmetrical Hearing Impairs Behavioral and Neural Sensitivity to Sound Location” (2018).

MLA Click to copy
Anbuhl, Kelsey L., and D. Tollin. Early Temporary Asymmetrical Hearing Impairs Behavioral and Neural Sensitivity to Sound Location. 2018.

BibTeX Click to copy

@article{kelsey2018a,
  title = {Early temporary asymmetrical hearing impairs behavioral and neural sensitivity to sound location},
  year = {2018},
  author = {Anbuhl, Kelsey L. and Tollin, D.}
}

Abstract

Children experiencing asymmetrical hearing early in life often display binaural hearing impairments that persist long after symmetric hearing is restored, suggesting abnormal central auditory development. Here, we test the hypothesis that abnormal neural coding of the interaural level difference (ILD) cue to sound location, resulting from asymmetrical hearing during development, underlies the hearing impairments. Guinea pigs were reared for 8 weeks from birth with a unilateral conductive hearing loss (CHL via earplug). After earplug removal we measured behavioral spatial acuity, the binaural interaction component (BIC) of the auditory brainstem response (ABR), and sensitivity to ILDs in auditory midbrain neurons (inferior colliculus, IC). Animals raised with asymmetric hearing displayed worse spatial acuity (~2x worse) for high-pass noise compared to age-matched controls, suggesting impaired sensitivity to ILDs. Physiologically, animals displayed abnormal BICs of the ABR indicating altered binaural proces...