Clinical hyperacusis consists of a marked intolerance to ordinary environmental sounds, while hearing thresholds are quite often normal. Hyperacusis appears to be a subjective phenomenon, which is not easily defined or quantified by objective measurements. In order to create a tool suitable to quantify and evaluate various hyperacusis symptoms, a questionnaire screening several aspects of auditory symptomatology has been constructed. Two hundred and one subjects (who were either hyperacusic or not), randomly selected from the general population, were tested. A principal component analysis performed on the correlation matrix of the 14 items of the questionnaire isolated three dimensions: attentional, social, and emotional. The three dimensions had satisfactory internal consistency reliability. The mean ± SD total score was 15 ± 6.7 out of 42 (maximum of hyperacusis) and a score greater than 28 seems to represent a strong auditory hypersensitivity. This new psychometric tool should further be tested on hyperacusic patients to verify its relevance in pathology and define the involvement of the three dimensions statistically obtained on the hyperacusis symptomatology.

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In this study, an original psychometric procedure was used in order to characterize in more detail than in previous studies the different perceptual components of tinnitus, i.e. auditory sensations which are perceived in the absence of a corresponding external acoustic stimulus. Ten subjects with chronic tinnitus were asked to rate on a numeric scale the contribution of elementary pitch sensations evoked by isolated frequency components to their overall tinnitus sensation. The resulting ‘internal tinnitus spectra’, which represented the estimated perceptual contribution to the tinnitus sensation as a function of frequency over a large range of frequencies, were found to occupy a wide frequency range corresponding largely to that at which hearing thresholds were abnormally elevated. In most cases, they exhibited a broad peak falling within the hearing loss range. This pattern of result suggests that in subjects with high-frequency hearing loss, tinnitus sensations, when present, resemble those evoked by high-frequency noise bands with, in some cases, a superimposed tonal-like pitch. These results confirm and extend earlier results in the literature and agree with the patients’ reports; their practical implications for the design of future studies on tinnitus and theoretical implications for the understanding of the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying tinnitus are discussed. The results of an additional experiment showed that the internal tinnitus spectrum could be altered by perceptual training in a fine frequency discrimination task with tones in the frequency range of the main peak of the tinnitus spectrum.

1. Outer hair cells (OHCs) have active micromechanical properties that are thought to be the origin of evoked otoacoustic emissions (EOAEs). In the present study, click-evoked otoacoustic emissions were recorded in humans with or without various contralateral acoustic stimulations. A previous study, concentrating on contralateral stimulation with broadband noise, had shown a decrease of the EOAE amplitude in humans. Results support a role for the efferent system in cochlear mechanics; indeed, medial efferent neurons of the olivocochlear bundle terminate on the OHCs. To obtain a better understanding of the medial efferent system functioning in humans, the present study looked at the contralateral suppressive effect as a function of stimulus parameters. 2. The study of the input-output function of the EOAE amplitude with and without a 50-dB SPL contralateral broadband noise showed that the suppressive effect was equivalent to a mean reduction of 3.77 dB. 3. For the EOAEs to tone pips, the contralateral suppressive effect was strongest when the contralateral ear stimuli were narrow bands that were centered around the central EOAE frequency. This frequency specificity disappeared for contralateral narrow band noise levels greater than 50 dB SPL. 4. The contralateral suppressive effect was also observed with transient contralateral sounds (nonfiltered clicks). Significant reductions of the EOAE amplitude were seen with contralateral click levels as low as 17.5 dB SL. Above this level, the EOAE amplitude decreased as the contralateral stimulus level increased. This effect was still present in subjects without any stapedial reflex, but absent in total unilateral hearing-loss subjects. Therefore this suppressive effect is unlikely to be due to alteration of the middle ear function or to transcranially conducted sound. 5. When the contralateral interclick interval exceeded 14.2 ms. the suppressive effect was smaller. With contralateral stimulus level maintained subjectively constant, the effect was found to disappear when the interclick interval was greater than 49.9 ms. A saturation of the contralateral suppressive effect was observed for click rates greater than 70/s (interclick interval less than 14.2 ms). 6. Our study confirms and specifies the contralateral sound suppression effect on cochlear mechanisms in humans, assessing the equivalent reduction, showing a frequency specificity and extending these findings to contralateral transient sounds. Any influence of the acoustic crosstalk was eliminated. A role played by middle ear muscles cannot be absolutely ruled out but is not necessary to produce such a contralateral suppressive effect (the effect being found in subjects after surgical removal of the stapedius muscle) and could not explain the frequency specificity.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)