Life: biomarkers of brain function help to diagnose hidden hearing loss

January 30, 2020 / BIOON / -- a new study by researchers in Massachusetts recently revealed two biomarkers that can explain people's inability to communicate effectively in noisy environments The study, published online last week in the scientific journal eLife, could provide information for clinical tests of recessive hearing loss Recessive hearing loss refers to a kind of hearing loss that can not be found by conventional hearing test It is believed to be caused by the abnormal connectivity and communication of nerve cells in the brain and ears (rather than the sensory cells that initially convert sound waves into electrochemistry) These neural changes will interfere with our ability to process sound in noisy environment, but the current hearing detection methods can not accurately recognize it In this paper, the authors first reviewed more than 100000 patient records over a 16-year period and found that about one in ten patients reported hearing difficulties, but auditory tests showed that their audiograms were normal (image source: www Pixabay Com) in order to develop biomarkers that can objectively explain these "hidden" hearing disorders, the authors developed two sets of tests First, EEG signals from the surface of the auditory canal are measured to capture the extent of brain processing of sound The second test uses special glasses to measure pupil diameter changes Previous studies have shown that changes in pupil size can reflect the cognitive effort spent on a task "Language is one of the most complex sounds we need to understand," said Dr Polley If our ability to communicate in social situations reflects our hearing health, then the corresponding test must be able to directly measure the brain's hearing processing ability " Sources of information: biomarkers of brain function may lead to clinical tests for hidden hearing loss original sources: aravindabshan Parthasarathy, Kenneth E Hancock, Kara Bennett, Victor degruttola, Daniel B Polley Bottom-up and top-down natural signs of ordered multi talker speech perception in results with normal hearing ELife, 2020; 9 doi: 10.7554/eLife.51419