A multi-channel EEG mini-cap can improve reliability for recording auditory brainstem responses in chinchillas.

Background: Disabling hearing loss affects nearly 466 million people worldwide (World Health Organization). The auditory brainstem response (ABR) is the most common non-invasive clinical measure of evoked potentials, e.g.

Cross-species experiments reveal widespread cochlear neural damage in normal hearing.

Animal models suggest that cochlear afferent nerve endings may be more vulnerable than sensory hair cells to damage from acoustic overexposure and aging. Because neural degeneration without hair-cell loss cannot be detected in standard clinical audiometry, whether such damage occurs in humans is hotly debated. Here, we address this debate through co-ordinated experiments in at-risk humans and a wild-type chinchilla model.