RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 The hearing aid dilemma: amplification, compression, and distortion of the neural code
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2020.10.02.323626
DO 10.1101/2020.10.02.323626
A1 Alex Armstrong
A1 Chi Chung Lam
A1 Shievanie Sabesan
A1 Nicholas A. Lesica
YR 2020
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/10/04/2020.10.02.323626.abstract
AB Hearing aids are the only available treatment for mild-to-moderate sensorineural hearing loss, but often fail to improve perception in difficult listening conditions. To identify the reasons for this failure, we studied the underlying neural code using large-scale single-neuron recordings in gerbils, a common animal model of human hearing. We found that a hearing aid restored the sensitivity of neural responses, but failed to restore their selectivity. The low selectivity of aided responses was not a direct effect of hearing loss per se, but rather a consequence of the strategies used by hearing aids to restore sensitivity: compression, which decreases the spectral and temporal contrast of incoming sounds, and amplification, which produces high intensities that distort the neural code even with normal hearing. To improve future hearing aids, new processing strategies that avoid this tradeoff between neural sensitivity and selectivity must be developed.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.