ArticleeNeuro
Weak Middle-Ear-Muscle Reflex in Humans with Noise-Induced Tinnitus and Normal Hearing May Reflect Cochlear Synaptopathy.
Article in eNeuro. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 54 papers.
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Who cites it
54 citing papers in PubMed, 100 citations in OpenAlex.
- Broadband Noise Acoustic Stapedial Reflex Thresholds as a Marker of Cochlear and Neural Integrity in Individuals with Normal Audiograms.Audiology research · 2026Article
- Rapid Characterization of Middle-Ear Muscle Reflexes Using Swept Elicitors.Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology : JARO · 2026Article
- Parallel Age-Related Cochlear Neural Degeneration and Cortical Gain Adaptation in Normal-Hearing Humans.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Test-Retest Differences in the Wideband Middle Ear Muscle Reflex.American journal of audiology · 2025Article
- The relationship and interdependence of auditory thresholds, proposed behavioural measures of hidden hearing loss, and physiological measures of auditory function.International journal of audiology · 2025Article
- Asymmetry in the Perception of Electrical Chirps Presented to Cochlear Implant Listeners.Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology : JARO · 2024Article
- Relationships between the expectations based on the regularity of preceding sound sequences and the medial olivocochlear reflex.PloS one · 2024Article
- Evidence of cochlear neural degeneration in normal-hearing subjects with tinnitus.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Associations Between Physiological Correlates of Cochlear Synaptopathy and Tinnitus in a Veteran Population.Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR · 2023Article
- Influence of tinnitus, lifetime noise exposure, and firearm use on hearing thresholds, distortion product otoacoustic emissions, and their relative metric.The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2023Article
- Middle ear muscle and medial olivocochlear activity inferred from individual human ears via cochlear potentials.The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2023Article
- The Rise and Fall of Aural Acoustic Immittance Assessment Tools.Seminars in hearing · 2023Review
- Wideband Acoustic Reflex Measurement.Seminars in hearing · 2023Review
- The middle ear muscle reflex: Current and future role in assessing noise-induced cochlear damage.The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2023Article
- Article
- No Reduction in the 226-Hz Probe Tone Acoustic Reflex Amplitude Following Severe Inner Hair Cell Loss in Chinchillas.Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology : JARO · 2022Article
- Clinical and investigational tools for monitoring noise-induced hyperacusis.The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2022Review
- Predicting neural deficits in sensorineural hearing loss from word recognition scores.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Current topics in hearing research: Deafferentation and threshold independent hearing loss.Hearing research · 2022Review
- Firing Rate Adaptation of the Human Auditory Nerve Optimizes Neural Signal-to-Noise Ratios.Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology : JARO · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Chronic tinnitus is a prevalent hearing disorder, and yet no successful treatments or objective diagnostic tests are currently available. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between the presence of tinnitus and the strength of the middle-ear-muscle reflex (MEMR) in humans with normal and near-normal hearing. Clicks were used as test stimuli to obtain a wideband measure of the effect of reflex activation on ear-canal sound pressure. The reflex was elicited using a contralateral broadband noise. The results show that the reflex strength is significantly reduced in individuals with noise-induced continuous tinnitus and normal or near-normal audiometric thresholds compared with no-tinnitus controls. Due to a shallower growth of the reflex strength in the tinnitus group, the difference between the two groups increased with increasing elicitor level. No significant difference in the effect of tinnitus on the strength of the middle-ear muscle reflex was found between males and females. The weaker reflex could not be accounted for by differences in audiometric hearing thresholds between the tinnitus and control groups. Similarity between our findings in humans and the findings of a reduced middle-ear muscle reflex in noise-exposed animals suggests that noise-induced tinnitus in individuals with clinically normal hearing may be a consequence of cochlear synaptopathy, a loss of synaptic connections between inner hair cells (IHCs) in the cochlea and auditory-nerve (AN) fibers that has been termed hidden hearing loss.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.