Compression amplification partially restores distorted loudness perception in sensorineural hearing loss

Evidence

Compression algorithms provide perceptual benefits in a number of ways. Achieving audibility for speech signals is critically important for speech understanding, and compression algorithms do this in a way that achieves audibility without overly distorting signals at high levels. Nonlinear amplification improves the elevated threshold of a listener and partially restores the distorted perception of loudness for some listeners with sensorineural hearing loss. — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 1721

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s earlier material on loudness recruitment in impaired ears versus the normal ear’s nonlinear cochlear amplification — compression substitutes externally for the lost cochlear nonlinearity.

Related

• Nonlinear hearing aid amplification partially restores distorted loudness perception. (similarity 0.95)
• Compression hearing aids distort spectral temporal and binaural cues in poorly understood ways (similarity 0.88)
• Hearing aid compression maps a wide input range into a narrower output range (similarity 0.86)
• Noise gates and compression let aids make faint speech audible without amplifying noise (similarity 0.86)
• Amplification only compensates for elevated thresholds, not other perceptual deficits from hearing loss. (similarity 0.85)
• Independent compression in each ear distorts binaural localization cues (similarity 0.85)
• Noise-induced hearing loss reduces several independent markers of cochlear compression (similarity 0.84)
• Loss of cochlear compression most harms speech recognition of intensity-attenuated syllables (similarity 0.83)
• Hearing aid algorithms distort auditory cues yet still improve speech understanding (similarity 0.83)
• Noise-induced hearing loss reduces neural suppression in proportion to tuning broadening (similarity 0.83)
• Speech can be resynthesized to selectively remove cochlear compression in hearing listeners (similarity 0.83)
• Sensorineural hearing loss compresses the full loudness range into fewer decibels (similarity 0.83)
• Hearing loss can compress loudness range while keeping sharp categories (similarity 0.83)
• Cochlear compression protects modulation detection from masking noise (similarity 0.82)
• Cochlear compression may protect AM detection against added background noise (similarity 0.82)