“…Increasing clinical (Berger et al, 1997;Cohen et al, 2002;Cave et al, 2007;Ritenour et al, 2008;Lew et al, 2009;Gallun et al, 2012a) and laboratory (Patterson and Hamernik, 1997;Ewert et al, 2012;Cho et al, 2013b;Du et al, 2013;Masri et al, 2018) evidence suggest that both peripheral and central auditory system (CAS) are important blast-susceptible structures, where CAS includes the brainstem, midbrain, thalamus, and cortex. Subcortical CAS such as the auditory brainstem may be particularly vulnerable to blast injury, including hemorrhages, intracranial deformation and blood-brain barrier (BBB) permeability, glutamate excitotoxicity, elevated calcium, as well as elevated markers of oxidative stress and neuroinflammation from near short-term (1-7 days) up to 2 weeks (Knudsen and Øen, 2003;Leung et al, 2008;Säljö et al, 2011;Cho et al, 2013a;Song et al, 2015;Walls et al, 2016;Laplaca et al, 1997;Hamann et al, 2008)).…”