Enhanced activation of the auditory cortex in patients with inner-ear hearing impairment: a magnetoencephalographic study.
OBJECTIVE
Injury of peripheral auditory organ often induces abnormality of loudness sensation such as loudness recruitment. However, objective evaluation of this phenomenon has rarely been performed. To elucidate this abnormal loudness sensation, cortical mechanisms were investigated by recording auditory evoked magnetic fields (AEFs).


METHODS
We recorded AEFs in 8 patients suffering from inner-ear hearing impairment with loudness recruitment and in 14 healthy hearing controls using a 122-channel whole-head neuromagnetometer. Tone bursts of 1 kHz were presented monaurally at 4 different intensities (40, 50, 60, 70 dB HL) with a constant interstimulus interval of 1 s.


RESULTS
In both groups, the 100 ms response (N100m) increased in amplitude and decreased in latency as a function of stimulus intensity in both hemispheres. Concerning the source strength, increment of dipole moment of N100m was more rapid according to the stimulus intensity in patients compared with that in healthy subjects. Source strength of N100m was enhanced at high stimulus intensity in patients, and its ratio to healthy subjects was 1.08 at 50 dB, 1.69 at 60 dB and 2.04 at 70 dB.


CONCLUSIONS
In patients with inner-ear hearing impairment, enhanced activation of the auditory cortex was observed, and may help explain loudness recruitment.
Department of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery, Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University, 54 Shogoin, Kawahara-cho, Sakyo-ku, Japan. morita@ent.kuhp.kyoto-u.ac.jp
T
T
Morita
Y
Y
Naito
T
T
Nagamine
N
N
Fujiki
H
H
Shibasaki
J
J
Ito
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001303:Auditory Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D007758:Ear, Inner / Q000503:physiopathology*; D005260:Female; D034381:Hearing Loss / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D015225:Magnetoencephalography / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010361:Patients / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric