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The Journal of Neuroscience, October 1, 1999, 19(19):8704-8711

Conductive Hearing Loss Produces a Reversible Binaural Hearing Impairment

David R. Moore, Jemma E. Hine, Ze Dong Jiang, Hiroaki Matsuda, Carl H. Parsons, and Andrew J. King

University Laboratory of Physiology, Oxford OX1 3PT, United Kingdom

Conductive hearing loss, produced by otitis media with effusion, is widespread in young children. However, little is known about its short- or long-term effects on hearing or the brain. To study the consequences of a conductive loss for the perception and processing of sounds, we plugged the left ear canal of ferrets for 7-15 months during either infancy or adulthood. Before or during plugging, the ferrets were trained to perform a binaural task requiring the detection of a 500 Hz tone, positioned 90° to the right, that was masked by two sources of broad-band noise. In one condition ("control"), both noise sources were 90° right and, in the second condition ("bilateral"), one noise source was moved to 90° left. Normal ferrets showed binaural unmasking: tone detection thresholds were lower (mean 10.1 dB) for the bilateral condition than for the control condition. Both groups of ear-plugged ferrets had reduced unmasking; the mean residual unmasking was 2.3 dB for the infant and 0.7 dB for the adult ear-plugged animals. After unplugging, unmasking increased in both groups (infant, 7.1 dB; adult, 6.9 dB) but not to normal levels. Repeated testing during the 22 months after unplugging revealed a gradual return to normal levels of unmasking. These results show that a unilateral conductive hearing loss, in either infancy or adulthood, impairs binaural hearing both during and after the hearing loss. They show scant evidence for adaptation to the plug and demonstrate a recovery from the impairment that occurs over a period of several months after restoration of normal peripheral function.

Key words: deafness; auditory plasticity; otitis media; binaural unmasking; ferret; ear plug

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Copyright © 1999 Society for Neuroscience  0270-6474/99/19198704-08$05.00/0

This article has been cited by other articles:

				J. K. Bizley, F. R. Nodal, I. Nelken, and A. J. King Functional Organization of Ferret Auditory Cortex Cereb Cortex, October 1, 2005; 15(10): 1637 - 1653. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				W.-Y. Lin and A. S. Feng GABA Is Involved in Spatial Unmasking in the Frog Auditory Midbrain J. Neurosci., September 3, 2003; 23(22): 8143 - 8151. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				D. R Moore Auditory development and the role of experience Br. Med. Bull., October 1, 2002; 63(1): 171 - 181. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				A. J. King, C. H. Parsons, and D. R. Moore Plasticity in the neural coding of auditory space in the mammalian brain PNAS, October 24, 2000; 97(22): 11821 - 11828. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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