Cochlear suppression declines with age in both high-side and low-side components

Evidence

Estimates of high-side and low-side suppression were significantly smaller for older adults than for younger adults. Most previous studies of aging effects on suppression have found decreased or absent suppression for older adults (Sommers and Gehr 1998 , 2010 ; Dubno and Ahlstrom 2001a , b ). … The results of the present study support this idea. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 959

Average amounts of low-side and high-side suppression for younger adults (open bars) and older adults (filled bars) at the 10-dB SL and 50-dB SPL signal levels are shown in Fig. 3 . With the short combined masker, all participants showed some low-side suppression, and all participants except for one older adult showed high-side suppression. With the long combined masker, 2/5 older adults had no measurable low-side suppression, and 3/5 older adults had no measurable high-side suppression. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 951

Categorization

• XREF: Relates to the classic ‘loss of suppression’ concept in auditory aging — reduction of cochlear compressive nonlinearity, central topic in impaired-hearing research.
• QUESTION: Whether the total absence of suppression in older adults reflects true cochlear loss or measurement floor effects of the forward-masking paradigm is worth investigating.
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 959; Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 951