Central auditory dysfunction among chronic alcoholics.
The relationship between chronic alcoholism and auditory processing problems was examined using a central auditory test battery. Fifteen carefully selected alcoholic subjects and 15 age-matched nonalcoholic control subjects were evaluated using pure-tone thresholds, spondee thresholds, speech discrimination, acoustic reflex thresholds, performance-intensity function, Staggered Spondaic Word (SSW) test, Synthetic Sentence Identification (SSI), and temporal summation. Significant differences between the groups were obtained for acoustic reflex measurement, SSW, and SSI. A significant subject-related interaction was obtained for temporal summation measurement. Approximately half of the alcoholics yielded results consistent with brainstem pathologic features.
D000328:Adult; D000437:Alcoholism / Q000150:complications*; D001301:Audiometry, Pure-Tone; D001304:Auditory Diseases, Central / Q000150:complications* / Q000175:diagnosis; D001309:Auditory Threshold; D001844:Bone Conduction; D001927:Brain Diseases / Q000150:complications; D001933:Brain Stem; D006320:Hearing Tests; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D013063:Speech Discrimination Tests