title: Otoacoustic emission estimates of human basilar membrane impulse response duration and cochlear filter tuning.
abstract: This study describes a method based on temporal suppression of click-evoked otoacoustic emissions (CEOAEs) to estimate the time course and duration of human basilar membrane impulse responses (BM IRs). This was achieved by tracing the suppression of dominant peaks in the CEOAE spectrum as a function of the temporal separation between two equal-level stimulus clicks. The relationship between the suppression pattern and underlying BM IR duration near the generation site of the CEOAE frequency was established using model simulations. To relate BM IR duration estimates to cochlear filter tuning (QERB), a tuning ratio was derived from available BM IR measurements in animals. Results for 11 normal-hearing subjects yielded BM IR duration estimates of 37.4/F ms at 65 dB peSPL and 36.4/F ms at 71 dB peSPL, with F in kHz. Corresponding QERBestimates were 14.2F[in kHz]0.22at 65 dB peSPL and 13.8F[in kHz]0.22at 71 dB peSPL. Because the proposed temporal suppression method relies on cochlear nonlinearity, the method is applicable for stimulus levels above 30-40 dB SPL and complements existing OAE methods to assess human cochlear filter tuning.
authors.affiliation: Dept. of Medical Physics and Acoustics, Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg, 26129 Oldenburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Raufer
authors.affiliation: Dept. of Medical Physics and Acoustics, Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg, 26129 Oldenburg, Germany. Electronic address: s.verhulst@ugent.be.
authors.forename: Sarah
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Verhulst
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000162:Acoustics; D001307:Auditory Perception; D001309:Auditory Threshold; D001489:Basilar Membrane / Q000502:physiology*; D003051:Cochlea / Q000502:physiology*; D006309:Hearing; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D009622:Noise / Q000009:adverse effects; D017711:Nonlinear Dynamics; D017084:Otoacoustic Emissions, Spontaneous; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D011571:Psychoacoustics; D013018:Sound Spectrography; D013997:Time Factors
keywords: Basilar membrane impulse responses; Filter tuning; Frequency selectivity; Otoacoustic emissions