Cochlear neuropathy and gain loss impair different intensity ranges of hearing
Evidence
Cochlear neuropathy is associated with a reduction in the number and types of auditory nerve (AN) fibers responsible for robust afferent transmission of sound (Kujawa and Liberman 2009 ). Whereas cochlear gain loss affects the whole dynamic range of sound intensities, cochlear neuropathy is thought to affect sound encoding at supra-threshold levels as high-threshold AN fibers are most sensitive to noise exposure (Furman et al. 2013 ). — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 5873
Categorization
Category: Definitional Content
- DEFINE: Distinguishes cochlear neuropathy (high-threshold AN fiber loss affecting supra-threshold encoding) from outer-hair-cell gain loss (affecting the whole dynamic range). This distinction is foundational for separating the two deficit mechanisms.
- XREF: Connects to Bharadwaj et al. 2014/2015 train of thought on envelope ITD and AM detection and to Kujawa and Liberman 2009 cochlear synaptopathy — a thread familiar from hidden-hearing-loss literature.
Related
- Cochlear neuropathy harms supra-threshold encoding because noise targets high-threshold auditory fibers (similarity 0.90)
- Hearing loss combines two distinct pathologies that impair separate processing stages (similarity 0.88)
- Cochlear neuropathy and gain loss may push AM detection in opposite directions (similarity 0.87)
- Normal-threshold listeners can show temporal coding deficits localized to the auditory brainstem (similarity 0.84)
- Cochlear gain loss can compensate for temporal coding deficits in AM detection (similarity 0.84)
- Auditory neuropathy impairs temporal gap detection while SNHL patients stay near normal. (similarity 0.83)
- Sensorineural hearing loss splits into cochlear versus auditory nerve damage (similarity 0.82)
- Mandarin tone perception accuracy falls from 97 percent to 63 percent in auditory neuropathy (similarity 0.82)
- Individual auditory nerve fibers cannot code the full hearing dynamic range (similarity 0.82)
- Cochlear gain loss can compensate for neural coding deficits (similarity 0.82)
- Differential metrics can separate cochlear gain loss from temporal coding deficits in hearing loss (similarity 0.82)
- Auditory neuropathy severely impairs fine-structure processing while preserving envelope use (similarity 0.81)
- Neural hearing damage occurs without measurable threshold elevation (similarity 0.81)
- Cochlear damage produces distinct perceptual deficits depending on which cell type is affected (similarity 0.81)
- Cochlear coiling makes inner nerve damage cause low-frequency hearing loss (similarity 0.80)