title: Estimating loudness growth from tone-burst evoked responses.
abstract: Several studies have investigated the relationship between click-evoked auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) and loudness growth in human listeners. While some of these studies have reported promising results, showing a correlative relationship between click ABR and loudness growth as a function of level, additional studies are necessary to determine if similar results can be obtained with frequency-specific stimuli and more specific details of the loudness function can be derived from ABR recordings. The aims of this study, therefore, were to (1) develop a fully objective procedure that segments specific features of evoked, tone-burst ABR recordings, (2) investigate the feasibility of using information derived from these recordings for estimating frequency-specific loudness-growth functions, and (3) determine to what extent the loudness-growth estimation performance through ABR can be improved by controlling for residual noise levels and parametric fitting. Results from eight normal-hearing listeners using 1- and 4-kHz stimuli show that the average mean-square error of the loudness-growth estimation obtained through the procedure is comparable to that of standard psychoacoustical procedures used to estimate loudness growth. The data set has been made publicly available at www.physionet.org.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Northeastern University, 360 Huntington Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA. ikarosilva@ieee.org
authors.forename: Ikaro
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Silva
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Epstein
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D000465:Algorithms; D016057:Evoked Potentials, Auditory, Brain Stem; D005240:Feasibility Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008144:Loudness Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D011571:Psychoacoustics; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D055815:Young Adult