Severe hearing loss from inner hair cell loss reduces maximum loudness

Evidence

On the other hand, loss of inner hair cells, as they do not interact with basilar membrane vibration, has no effect on the shape of the BM I-O function. Psychophysically, however, loss of inner hair cells will elevate the threshold and may also impact the perception of loudness because of a reduced input to the auditory nerve. While there is no current way to assess the relative contribution of inner and outer hair cells to a specific listener’s hearing loss, severe and profound hearing losses likely involve inner hair cell loss in addition to outer hair cell loss. For many of these listeners, the loudness of sounds, even at high levels, does not approach the loudness measured in listeners with normal hearing. This phenomenon is sometimes called underrecruitment, or partial recruitment. — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 852

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines underrecruitment/partial recruitment in contrast to loudness recruitment.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 852