Tinnitus mechanisms and the need for an objective electrophysiological tinnitus test.

Tinnitus, the perception of sound with no external auditory stimulus, is a complex, multifaceted, and potentially devastating disorder. Despite recent advances in our understanding of tinnitus, there are limited options for effective treatment. Tinnitus treatments are made more complicated by the lack of a test for tinnitus based on objectively measured physiological characteristics.

Comparison of two behavioral tests for tinnitus assessment in mice.

Animal research focused on chronic tinnitus associated with noise-induced hearing loss can be expensive and time-consuming as a result of the behavioral training required. Although there exist a number of behavioral tests for tinnitus; there have been few formal direct comparisons of these tests. Here, we evaluated animals in two different tinnitus assessment methods.

Long-Duration Sound-Induced Facilitation Changes Population Activity in the Inferior Colliculus.

The inferior colliculus (IC) is at the midpoint of the auditory system and integrates virtually all information ascending from the auditory brainstem, organizes it, and transmits the results to the auditory forebrain. Its abundant, excitatory local connections are crucial for this task. This study describes a long duration sound (LDS)-induced potentiation in the IC that changes both subsequent tone-evoked responses and spontaneous activity.

C1ql1 is expressed in adult outer hair cells of the cochlea in a tonotopic gradient.

Hearing depends on the transduction of sounds into neural signals by the inner hair cells of the cochlea. Cochleae also have outer hair cells with unique electromotile properties that increase auditory sensitivity, but they are particularly susceptible to damage by intense noise exposure, ototoxic drugs, and aging. Although the outer hair cells have synapses on afferent neurons that project to the brain, the function of this neuronal circuit is unclear.

Categorical processing of fast temporal sequences in the guinea pig auditory brainstem.

Discrimination of temporal sequences is crucial for auditory object recognition, phoneme categorization and speech understanding. The present study shows that auditory brainstem responses (ABR) to pairs of noise bursts separated by a short gap can be classified into two distinct groups based on the ratio of gap duration to initial noise burst duration in guinea pigs. If this ratio was smaller than 0.

Mice heterozygous for the Cdh23/Ahl1 mutation show age-related deficits in auditory temporal processing.

A mutation in the Cdh23 gene is implicated in both syndromic and nonsyndromic hearing loss in humans and age-related hearing loss in C57BL/6 mice. It is generally assumed that human patients (as well as mouse models) only have a hearing loss phenotype if the mutation is homozygous. However, a major complaint for patients with a hearing disability is a reduced speech intelligibility that may be related to temporal processing deficits rather than just elevated thresholds.

The contribution of inferior colliculus activity to the auditory brainstem response (ABR) in mice.

In mice, the auditory brainstem response (ABR) is frequently used to assess hearing status in transgenic hearing models. The diagnostic value of the ABR depends on knowledge about the anatomical sources of its characteristic waves. Here, we studied the contribution of the inferior colliculus (IC) to the click-evoked scalp ABR in mice.

ATP-sensitive K(+) channels (Kir6.1/SUR1) regulate gap junctional coupling in cochlear-supporting cells.

Using the double whole-cell patch-clamp technique, we found that the absence of intracellular ATP led to gap junction uncoupling in cochlear-supporting Hensen cells. The uncoupling was observed as a progressive reduction of the gap junctional electrical conductance from a starting value of approximately 40 nS to less than 0.04 nS within 10-20 min.

Treatment of middle ear ventilation disorders: sheep as animal model for stenting the human Eustachian tube--a cadaver study.

Eustachian tube disorders can lead to chronic otitis media with consecutive conductive hearing loss. To improve treatment and to develop new types of implants such as stents, an adequate experimental animal model is required. As the middle ear of sheep is known to be comparable to the human middle ear, the dimensions of the Eustachian tube in two strains of sheep were investigated.

Insertion site and sealing technique affect residual hearing and tissue formation after cochlear implantation.

Tissue formation around the electrode array of a cochlear implant has been suggested to influence preservation of residual hearing as well as electrical hearing performance of implanted subjects. Further, inhomogeneity in the electrical properties of the scala tympani shape the electrical field and affect current spread. Intracochlear trauma due to electrode insertion and the insertion site itself are commonly seen as triggers for the tissue formation.