Ear-EEG-Based Objective Hearing Threshold Estimation Evaluated on Normal Hearing Subjects

2018 ◽  
Vol 65 (5) ◽  
pp. 1026-1034 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Bech Christensen ◽  
James Michael Harte ◽  
Thomas Lunner ◽  
Preben Kidmose
2002 ◽  
Vol 13 (05) ◽  
pp. 236-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Rance ◽  
Field Rickards

This retrospective study examines the relationship between auditory steady-state evoked potential (ASSEP) thresholds determined in infancy and subsequently obtained behavioral hearing levels in children with normal hearing or varying degrees of sensorineural hearing loss. Overall, the results from 211 subjects showed that the two test techniques were highly correlated, with Pearson r values exceeding .95 at each of the audiometric test frequencies between 500 and 4000 Hz. Analysis of the findings for babies with significant hearing loss (moderate to profound levels) showed similar threshold relationships to those obtained in previous studies involving adults and older children. The results for infants with normal or near-normal hearing did, however, differ from those reported for older subjects, with behavioral thresholds typically 10 to 15 dB better than would have been predicted from their ASSEP levels.


2005 ◽  
Vol 132 (4) ◽  
pp. 550-553 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haralampos Gouveris ◽  
Jan Maurer ◽  
Wolf Mann

OBJECTIVE: To investigate cochlear outer hair cell function in patients with acute tonal tinnitus and normal or near-normal hearing threshold. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING: Prospective controlled study in an academic tertiary health center. Distortion products of otoacoustic emissions (DPOAE)-grams of 32 ears with acute tonal tinnitus and normal hearing or minimal hearing loss were compared with those of 17 healthy nontinnitus ears. RESULTS: Tinnitus ears exhibited relatively increased amplitudes of DPOAE at high frequencies (4-6.3 kHz) when compared with the group of healthy ears and relatively decreased DPOAE amplitudes at middle frequencies (1650-2400 Hz). Statistically significant ( P < 0.01) increased mean values of DPOAE amplitudes were observed only at a frequency of f2 equal to 4.9 kHz. CONCLUSIONS AND SIGNIFICANCE: These findings suggest an altered functional state of the outer hair cells at a selected high-frequency region of the cochlea in ears with acute tonal tinnitus and normal or near-normal hearing threshold.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Garrett Cardon ◽  
Anu Sharma

Purpose Auditory threshold estimation using the auditory brainstem response or auditory steady state response is limited in some populations (e.g., individuals with auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder [ANSD] or those who have difficulty remaining still during testing and cannot tolerate general anesthetic). However, cortical auditory evoked potentials (CAEPs) can be recorded in many such patients and have been employed in threshold approximation. Thus, we studied CAEP estimates of auditory thresholds in participants with normal hearing, sensorineural hearing loss, and ANSD. Method We recorded CAEPs at varying intensity levels to speech (i.e., /ba/) and tones (i.e., 1 kHz) to estimate auditory thresholds in normal-hearing adults ( n = 10) and children ( n = 10) and case studies of children with sensorineural hearing loss and ANSD. Results Results showed a pattern of CAEP amplitude decrease and latency increase as stimulus intensities declined until waveform components disappeared near auditory threshold levels. Overall, CAEP thresholds were within 10 dB HL of behavioral thresholds for both stimuli. Conclusions The above findings suggest that CAEPs may be clinically useful in estimating auditory threshold in populations for whom such a method does not currently exist. Physiologic threshold estimation in difficult-to-test clinical populations could lead to earlier intervention and improved outcomes.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
A. K. Quintana-López ◽  

The difficulties of applying the audiometry in pediatric populations and its methodological limitations in implanted patients have spurred the development of new alternative auditory evaluation methods. This study aimed to show an objective method to estimate hearing thresholds in pediatric cochlear implanted patients through Electrical Cochlear Response (ECR) and to quantify the hearing performance by using an Auditory Skills Questionnaire (ASQ) and a Calibrated Sounds Test (CST) designed on purpose. Eighteen implanted patients, 1-6 years old underwent standard audiometry, ECR, and ASQ in two evaluation sessions T1 and T2. At T2, in addition, patients underwent CST. For patients ≤3 years old (G1), Pure Tone Averages (PTA and PTAECR)showed a statistically significant difference between them at T1 and T2. At T2 improvements in audiometric and ECR thresholds were observed (p<0.05), regarding T1. Patients older than 3 years (G2) had significantly better ASQ and CST scores. CST detection scores at 40 dBHL for groups G1 and G2, 36% and 70% respectively, showed a better relationship to ECR thresholds. The relationship observed between ECR thresholds and CST detection scores seems to confirm that ECR brings the feasibility of objective hearing threshold estimation and provides a better frequency resolution than audiometry.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Cox ◽  
Bert de Vries

Pure-tone audiometry—the process of estimating a person's hearing threshold from “audible” and “inaudible” responses to tones of varying frequency and intensity—is the basis for diagnosing and quantifying hearing loss. By taking a probabilistic modeling approach, both optimal tone selection (in terms of expected information gain) and hearing threshold estimation can be derived through Bayesian inference methods. The performance of probabilistic model-based audiometry methods is directly linked to the quality of the underlying model. In recent years, Gaussian process (GP) models have been shown to provide good results in this context. We present methods to improve the efficiency of GP-based audiometry procedures by improving the underlying model. Instead of a single GP, we propose to use a GP mixture model that can be conditioned on side-information about the subject. The underlying idea is that one can typically distinguish between different types of hearing thresholds, enabling a mixture model to better capture the statistical properties of hearing thresholds among a population. Instead of modeling all hearing thresholds by a single GP, a mixture model allows specific types of hearing thresholds to be modeled by independent GP models. Moreover, the mixing coefficients can be conditioned on side-information such as age and gender, capturing the correlations between age, gender, and hearing threshold. We show how a GP mixture model can be optimized for a specific target population by learning the parameters from a data set containing annotated audiograms. We also derive an optimal tone selection method based on greedy information gain maximization, as well as hearing threshold estimation through Bayesian inference. The proposed models are fitted to a data set containing roughly 176 thousand annotated audiograms collected in the Nordic countries. We compare the predictive accuracies of optimized mixture models of varying sizes with that of an optimized single-GP model. The usefulness of the optimized models is tested in audiometry simulations. Simulation results indicate that an optimized GP mixture model can significantly outperform an optimized single-GP model in terms of predictive accuracy, and leads to significant increases the efficiency of the resulting Bayesian audiometry procedure.


2020 ◽  
Vol 59 (10) ◽  
pp. 745-752 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthea Bott ◽  
Louise Hickson ◽  
Carly Meyer ◽  
Fabrice Bardy ◽  
Bram Van Dun ◽  
...  

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