Ménière's disease: effects of glycerol on tasks involving temporal processing.
The present study examined the effect of glycerol ingestion on aspects of auditory performance in subjects having Ménière's disease. It was hypothesized that Ménière's disease may be associated with abnormal firing in the auditory nerve and that this should result in a decreased ability to code the auditory temporal fine structure. Psychoacoustical measures of interaural time discrimination and quasi frequency modulation rate discrimination were used as measures of temporal coding, and performance on these tasks was examined both before and after glycerol ingestion. Pre- and postglycerol measures of speech recognition and audiometric thresholds were also obtained. In agreement with previous results, glycerol-related changes in audiometric thresholds were modest or absent, but improvements in speech recognition were relatively reliable. Improvements in interaural time discrimination and quasi frequency modulation rate discrimination were also observed. The results provide limited support for the hypothesis that Ménière's disease may be associated with a reduced ability to code the temporal fine structure of sound.
Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, N.C., USA.
Brian J
BJ
Chung
Joseph W
JW
Hall
Emily
E
Buss
John H
JH
Grose
Harold C
HC
Pillsbury
D000328:Adult; D001309:Auditory Threshold / Q000187:drug effects*; D005260:Female; D005990:Glycerol / Q000494:pharmacology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008575:Meniere Disease / Q000209:etiology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D011571:Psychoacoustics; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000187:drug effects*; D013998:Time Perception / Q000187:drug effects*
D005990:Glycerol