Psychoacoustic tuning curves and averaged electroencephalic responses in a patient with low-frequency sensory-neural hearing loss.
A 10-year-old girl whose bilateral, low-frequency, sensory-neural hearing loss had been noted three years earlier showed a drop in speech discrimination in her left ear with no corresponding decrease in pure-tone sensitivity. Psychoacoustic tuning curves and middle-component averaged electroencephalic responses to tone-pips suggested that damage to the left ear had become greater than indicated by the pure-tone audiogram, accounting for the drop in speech discrimination. This case suggests caution in inferring the magnitude of damage to the peripheral auditory system from tonal thresholds.
D001300:Audiometry, Evoked Response; D001301:Audiometry, Pure-Tone; D002648:Child; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology; D006312:Hearing Loss, Bilateral / Q000503:physiopathology; D006319:Hearing Loss, Sensorineural / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D011571:Psychoacoustics; D013063:Speech Discrimination Tests