Frequency and rate discrimination by Menière patients.
Discrimination tests were conducted for each ear of 6 patients with unilateral Menière's disease. Differential sensitivity to changes in pure-tone frequency (presumably containing temporal and place cues) was compared to differential sensitivity to changes in rate of sinusoidally amplitude-modulated noise (presumably containing only a temporal cue) at common low frequencies and modulation rates (less than 400 Hz). An adaptive forced-choice psychophysical procedure was used. The better-ear results for the Menière patients generally were similar to findings for normally hearing listeners. For the impaired ears, pure-tone frequency discrimination typically was impaired relatively more than was the rate discrimination up to 200 Hz. However, rate discrimination was difficult or impossible above 250-300 Hz. Absolute frequency difference limens (DLs) were, on average, smaller than or at least equivalent to absolute rate DLs. Moreover, frequency discrimination always was possible for the Menière patients.
D000328:Adult; D001309:Auditory Threshold; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008575:Meniere Disease / Q000523:psychology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D010897:Pitch Discrimination; D011571:Psychoacoustics