TY  - JOUR
A1  - Kugler, Kathrin
A1  - Wiegrebe, Lutz
A1  - Grothe, Benedikt
A1  - Kössl, Manfred
A1  - Gürkov, Robert
A1  - Krause, Eike
A1  - Drexl, Markus
T1  - Low-frequency sound affects active micromechanics in the human inner ear
T2  - Royal Society open science
N2  - Noise-induced hearing loss is one of the most common auditory pathologies, resulting from overstimulation of the human cochlea, an exquisitely sensitive micromechanical device. At very low frequencies (less than 250 Hz), however, the sensitivity of human hearing, and therefore the perceived loudness is poor. The perceived loudness is mediated by the inner hair cells of the cochlea which are driven very inadequately at low frequencies. To assess the impact of low-frequency (LF) sound, we exploited a by-product of the active amplification of sound outer hair cells (OHCs) perform, so-called spontaneous otoacoustic emissions. These are faint sounds produced by the inner ear that can be used to detect changes of cochlear physiology. We show that a short exposure to perceptually unobtrusive, LF sounds significantly affects OHCs: a 90 s, 80 dB(A) LF sound induced slow, concordant and positively correlated frequency and level oscillations of spontaneous otoacoustic emissions that lasted for about 2 min after LF sound offset. LF sounds, contrary to their unobtrusive perception, strongly stimulate the human cochlea and affect amplification processes in the most sensitive and important frequency range of human hearing.
KW  - cochlea
KW  - low-frequency sound
KW  - spontaneous otoacoustic emissions
KW  - noise-induced hearing loss
Y1  - 2014
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/41817
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-418174
SN  - 2054-5703
N1  - (c) 2014 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
VL  - 1
IS  - (2) 140166
PB  - Royal Society publishing
CY  - London
ER  -