PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Sarineh Keshishzadeh AU - Markus Garrett AU - Sarah Verhulst TI - The Derived-Band Envelope Following Response and its Sensitivity to Sensorineural Hearing Deficits AID - 10.1101/820704 DP - 2019 Jan 01 TA - bioRxiv PG - 820704 4099 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/11/01/820704.short 4100 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/11/01/820704.full AB - The envelope following response (EFR) is a sensitive marker of synaptopathy in animal models. However, its amplitude is affected by the spread of basilar-membrane excitation and other coexisting sensorineural hearing deficits. This study aims to (i) improve frequency specificity of the EFR by introducing a derived-band EFR (DBEFR) technique and (ii) investigate the effect of lifetime noise exposure, age and outer-hair-cell (OHC) damage on DBEFR magnitudes. Additionally, we adopt a modelling approach to validate the frequency-specificity of the DBEFR and test how different aspects of sensorineural hearing loss affect peripheral generators. The combined analysis of simulations and experimental data proposes that the DBEFRs extracted from the [2-6]-kHz frequency band is a sensitive and frequency-specific measure of synaptopathy in humans. Individual variability in DBEFR magnitudes among listeners with normal audiograms was explained by their self-reported amount of experienced lifetime noise-exposure and corresponded to amplitude variability predicted by synaptopathy. Older listeners consistently had reduced DBEFR amplitudes in comparison to young normal-hearing listeners, in correspondence to how age-induced synaptopathy affects EFRs and compromises temporal envelope encoding. Lastly, OHC damage was also seen to affect the DBEFR amplitude, hence this marker should be combined with a marker sensitive to OHC-damage to offer a differential diagnosis of synaptopathy in listeners with impaired audiograms.