People are increasingly being exposed to environmental noise from traffic, media and other sources that falls within and outside legal limits. Although such environmental noise is known to cause stress in the auditory system, it is still generally considered to be harmless. This complacency may be misplaced: even in the absence of cochlear damage, new findings suggest that environmental noise may progressively degrade hearing through alterations in the way sound is represented in the adult auditory cortex.

No abstract