Conveners
A14.03 Hidden hearing loss & synaptopathy: Diagnostics, treatment & functional consequences: S174
- Emmanuel Ponsot (STMS (Ircam-CNRS-SU))
- Lukas Rรผttiger (University of Tรผbingen)
A14.03 Hidden hearing loss & synaptopathy: Diagnostics, treatment & functional consequences: S292
- Emmanuel Ponsot (STMS (Ircam-CNRS-SU))
- Lukas Rรผttiger (University of Tรผbingen)
A14.03 Hidden hearing loss & synaptopathy: Diagnostics, treatment & functional consequences: S293
- Emmanuel Ponsot (STMS (Ircam-CNRS-SU))
- Lukas Rรผttiger (University of Tรผbingen)
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Miguel Temboury-Gutierrez (Hearing Systems section, Technical University of Denmark)09/09/2026, 10:20A14 Physiological Acoustics and Audiology
Age-related auditory nerve (AN) degeneration has been observed in post-mortem human and animal studies and proposed to underlie suprathreshold perceptual difficulties despite normal audiometric thresholds. However, this link remains unconfirmed in vivo as reliable electrophysiological markers of AN integrity, independent of hair-cell status, are currently lacking.Brainstem-generated responses...
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David Lรณpez-Ramos (STMS (Ircam-CNRS-SU))09/09/2026, 10:40A14 Physiological Acoustics and Audiology
Age-related cochlear synaptopathy (CS) degrades neural coding of sound, as reflected in envelope and frequency following responses (EFR/FFR). However, its perceptual consequences remain unclear. This study examined whether age-related declines in subcortical neural sound representation are reflected in deficits in perceptual discrimination of temporal and spectral features. Two groups of young...
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Michael Heinz (Purdue University)09/09/2026, 11:00A14 Physiological Acoustics and Audiology
Moderate-level noise exposure and/or aging can eliminate cochlear synapses without permanently damaging hair cells or elevating thresholds in animals. Cochlear synaptopathy (CS) has been hypothesized to contribute to human perceptual difficulties in noise even with normal audiograms. However, testing this hypothesis is difficult because 1) ethical limits exist in measuring human synaptopathy...
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Kenneth Henry (University of Rochester)09/09/2026, 11:20A14 Physiological Acoustics and Audiology
Cochlear synaptopathy is a common pathology involving damage to and loss of auditory-nerve synapses with inner hair cells. Cochlear synaptopathy is undetectable with the clinical audiogram and widely thought to cause hearing-in-noise problems known as hidden hearing loss. Animal models are advantageous for studying links between cochlear synaptopathy and hidden hearing loss because synaptic...
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Boris Gourevitch (Institut de l'Audition, Institut Pasteur)09/09/2026, 11:40A14 Physiological Acoustics and Audiology
Hyperacusis affects 2-15% of the population, causing painful sensitivity to everyday sounds, yet its pathophysiology remains obscure due to limited animal models and frequent tinnitus comorbidity. This study aimed to identify neural biomarkers and behavioral changes reliably characterizing hyperacusis.Mice were exposed to acoustic trauma (2h, 95 dB SPL) inducing temporary hearing loss....
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Lukas Rรผttiger (University of Tรผbingen)09/09/2026, 14:20A14 Physiological Acoustics and Audiology
With aging progressing inner hair cell (IHC) synaptopathy precedesage-dependent elevation of auditory thresholds. We therefore compared central sound responses in young, middle-aged, and older rats for human syllables with spectral and temporal characteristics requiring temporal fine structure (TFS) or temporal envelope (TENV) coding. As stimuli the syllables /o/, /u/, /di/, /bi/, /du/ and...
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Laurel H. Carney (University of Rochester)09/09/2026, 14:40A14 Physiological Acoustics and Audiology
The loss of a larger percentage of low-spontaneous-rate (LSR) than high-spontaneous-rate (HSR) auditory-nerve (AN) fibers has been a focus of much of the work on cochlear synaptopathy. This talk will discuss the implications of the loss of different fiber types on hearing of complex sounds, especially in noisy settings. The average rates of LSR fibers are often assumed to be important for...
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Marta Campi (University of Zurich, University Hospital Zurich)09/09/2026, 15:00A14 Physiological Acoustics and Audiology
Animal studies suggest cochlear synaptopathy predominantly affects high-threshold, low spontaneous rate auditory nerve fibers. This pathology has been proposed as a contributor to speech-in-noise deficits despite normal audiometric thresholds. A candidate explanation is that remaining fibers compensate by shifting encoding to alternative frequency channels, but this compensation depends on...
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Morgan Thienpont (Ghent University)09/09/2026, 15:20A14 Physiological Acoustics and Audiology
Cochlear synaptopathy (CS) is a form of auditory neural damage characterized by the loss of synapses between inner hair cells and auditory nerve fibers (ANFs), often without changes in audiometric thresholds. It is associated with noise exposure and aging and is thought to underlie difficulties in speech perception in noisy environments despite normal hearing sensitivity. CS is believed to...
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David Lรณpez-Ramos (STMS (Ircam-CNRS-SU))09/09/2026, 16:00A14 Physiological Acoustics and Audiology
In humans, aging is associated with a loss of synapses between inner hair cells and auditory nerve fibers (cochlear synaptopathy (CS)). While CS is expected to affect afferent sound encoding, it may also influence efferent control of cochlear gain by reducing the input to the medial olivocochlear (MOC) system. To date, this possibility has not been extensively investigated. Here, we combined...
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Daniil Kiselev (Institute for Neuroscience Montpellier)09/09/2026, 16:20A14 Physiological Acoustics and Audiology
Traditionally, vowel encoding in the auditory nerve relies on type I spiral ganglion neurons (SGNs) with characteristic frequency (CF) close to global spectral peaks (formants, F). This study investigates contributions of subpopulations of auditory nerve fibers to coding spectral and temporal features of vowels under normal conditions and following kainate-induced cochlear synaptopathy. Four...
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Ross Maddox (University of Michigan)09/09/2026, 16:40A14 Physiological Acoustics and Audiology
Auditory nerve (AN) fibers transmit the output of cochlear hair cells to the brainstem. Fibers vary in their threshold, with some sensitive to lower-level sounds and others requiring higher levels to respond. While threshold-specific fiber responses can be directly recorded in animals, non-invasive measures in humans, i.e., auditory brainstem responses or the compound action potential (CAP),...
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Lukas Rรผttiger (University of Tรผbingen)09/09/2026, 17:00A14 Physiological Acoustics and Audiology
Young adults hear sounds up to 20 kHz. Therefore, the loss of extended high-frequency hearing (EHF; above 8 kHz) is a hallmark of age-related hearing loss, often progressing from early lifetime. This deficit frequently goes undetected because routine clinical hearing tests and most hearing aids are currently limited mostly up to 8 kHz. EHF hearing has been linked to deficits in speech...
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Rebecca Dewey (University of Nottingham)09/09/2026, 17:20A14 Physiological Acoustics and Audiology
The NExpo study investigates how noise exposure, aging, and noise-induced hearing loss affect the human auditory nervous system. 200 healthy participants were recruited into four groups (n=50 each) based on age, pure tone audiometry (PTA), and Noise Exposure Structured Interview (NESI) score. Group 1 (G1): 18-19 years, low noise exposure, normal hearing; Group 2 (G2): 30-50 years, low noise...
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Katrin Krumbholz (University of Nottingham)09/09/2026, 17:40A14 Physiological Acoustics and Audiology
Animal studies suggest that the earliest consequences of loud noise exposure may be audiometrically unapparent, or โhidden,โ to conventional thresholdโbased tests. In humans, difficulty understanding speech in noise (SiN) has been widely hypothesised as a primary functional consequence of such hidden hearing damage, leading to the view that objective SiN testsโsuch as the digitโtriplet test...
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