scholarly journals Noise-induced hearing loss increases the temporal precision of complex envelope coding by auditory-nerve fibers

Author(s):  
Kenneth S. Henry ◽  
Sushrut Kale ◽  
Michael G. Heinz
2017 ◽  
Vol 345 ◽  
pp. 79-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Kroon ◽  
Dyan Ramekers ◽  
Emma M. Smeets ◽  
Ferry G.J. Hendriksen ◽  
Sjaak F.L. Klis ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Dalian Ding ◽  
Haiyan Jiang ◽  
Senthilvelan Manohar ◽  
Xiaopeng Liu ◽  
Li Li ◽  
...  

2-Hyroxypropyl-beta-cyclodextrin (HPβCD) is being used to treat Niemann-Pick C1, a fatal neurodegenerative disease caused by abnormal cholesterol metabolism. HPβCD slows disease progression, but unfortunately causes severe, rapid onset hearing loss by destroying the outer hair cells (OHC). HPβCD-induced damage is believed to be related to the expression of prestin in OHCs. Because prestin is postnatally upregulated from the cochlear base toward the apex, we hypothesized that HPβCD ototoxicity would spread from the high-frequency base toward the low-frequency apex of the cochlea. Consistent with this hypothesis, cochlear hearing impairments and OHC loss rapidly spread from the high-frequency base toward the low-frequency apex of the cochlea when HPβCD administration shifted from postnatal day 3 (P3) to P28. HPβCD-induced histopathologies were initially confined to the OHCs, but between 4- and 6-weeks post-treatment, there was an unexpected, rapid and massive expansion of the lesion to include most inner hair cells (IHC), pillar cells (PC), peripheral auditory nerve fibers, and spiral ganglion neurons at location where OHCs were missing. The magnitude and spatial extent of HPβCD-induced OHC death was tightly correlated with the postnatal day when HPβCD was administered which coincided with the spatiotemporal upregulation of prestin in OHCs. A second, massive wave of degeneration involving IHCs, PC, auditory nerve fibers and spiral ganglion neurons abruptly emerged 4–6 weeks post-HPβCD treatment. This secondary wave of degeneration combined with the initial OHC loss results in a profound, irreversible hearing loss.


2002 ◽  
Vol 87 (5) ◽  
pp. 2262-2270 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Ferragamo ◽  
Donata Oertel

Whole cell patch recordings in slices show that the probability of firing of action potentials in octopus cells of the ventral cochlear nucleus depends on the dynamic properties of depolarization. Octopus cells fired only when the rate of rise of a depolarization exceeded a threshold value that varied between 5 and 15 mV/ms among cells. The threshold rate of rise was independent of whether depolarizations were evoked synaptically or by the intracellular injection of current. Previous work showed that octopus cells are contacted by many auditory nerve fibers, each providing less than 1-mV depolarization. Summation of synaptic input from multiple fibers is required for an octopus cell to reach threshold. In firing only when synaptic depolarization exceeds a threshold rate, octopus cells fire selectively when synaptic input is sufficiently large and synchronized for the small, brief unitary excitatory postsynaptic potentials (EPSPs) to sum to produce a rapidly rising depolarization. The sensitivity to rate of depolarization is governed by a low-threshold, α-dendrotoxin-sensitive potassium conductance ( g KL). This conductance also shapes the peaks of action potentials, contributing to the precision in their timing. Firing in neighboring T stellate cells depends much less strongly on the rate of rise. They lack strong α-dendrotoxin-sensitive conductances. Octopus cells appear to be specialized to detect synchronization in the activation of groups of auditory nerve fibers, a common pattern in responses to natural sounds, and convey its occurrence with temporal precision.


2004 ◽  
Vol 91 (2) ◽  
pp. 784-795 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael G. Heinz ◽  
Eric D. Young

People with sensorineural hearing loss are often constrained by a reduced acoustic dynamic range associated with loudness recruitment; however, the neural correlates of loudness and recruitment are still not well understood. The growth of auditory-nerve (AN) activity with sound level was compared in normal-hearing cats and in cats with a noise-induced hearing loss to test the hypothesis that AN-fiber rate-level functions are steeper in impaired ears. Stimuli included best-frequency and fixed-frequency tones, broadband noise, and a brief speech token. Three types of impaired responses were observed. 1) Fibers with rate-level functions that were similar across all stimuli typically had broad tuning, consistent with outer-hair-cell (OHC) damage. 2) Fibers with a wide dynamic range and shallow slope above threshold often retained sharp tuning, consistent with primarily inner-hair-cell (IHC) damage. 3) Fibers with very steep rate-level functions for all stimuli had thresholds above approximately 80 dB SPL and very broad tuning, consistent with severe IHC and OHC damage. Impaired rate-level slopes were on average shallower than normal for tones, and were steeper in only limited conditions. There was less variation in rate-level slopes across stimuli in impaired fibers, presumably attributable to the lack of suppression-induced reductions in slopes for complex stimuli relative to BF-tone slopes. Sloping saturation was observed less often in impaired fibers. These results illustrate that AN fibers do not provide a simple representation of the basilar-membrane I/O function and suggest that both OHC and IHC damage can affect AN response growth.


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