Department of Psychology, University of Essex, Colchester, CO4 3SQ, UK.
J Assoc Res Otolaryngol. 2013 Apr;14(2):275-82. doi: 10.1007/s10162-013-0371-6. Epub 2013 Jan 18.
Tinnitus is strongly linked with the presence of damaged hearing. However, it is not known why tinnitus afflicts only some, and not all, hearing-impaired listeners. One possibility is that tinnitus patients have specific inner ear damage that triggers tinnitus. In this study, differences in cochlear function inferred from psychophysical measures were measured between hearing-impaired listeners with tinnitus and hearing-impaired listeners without tinnitus. Despite having similar average hearing loss, tinnitus patients were observed to have better frequency selectivity and compression than those without tinnitus. The results suggest that the presence of subjective tinnitus may not be strongly associated to outer hair cell impairment, at least where hearing impairment is evident. The results also show a different average pattern of hearing impairment amongst the tinnitus patients, consistent with the suggestion that inner hair cell dysfunction with subsequent reduced auditory innervation is a possible trigger of tinnitus.
耳鸣与听力损伤密切相关。然而,为什么耳鸣只困扰部分听力受损者,而不是所有听力受损者,目前还不清楚。一种可能性是,耳鸣患者的内耳损伤具有特异性,从而引发耳鸣。在这项研究中,我们测量了伴有耳鸣和不伴有耳鸣的听力受损者的听力测量值,推断出耳蜗功能的差异。尽管平均听力损失相似,但耳鸣患者的频率选择性和压缩性要好于无耳鸣患者。结果表明,主观耳鸣的存在与外毛细胞损伤的关联并不强,至少在听力损伤明显的情况下是这样。结果还显示,耳鸣患者的听力损伤模式存在差异,这与内毛细胞功能障碍导致听觉传入神经减少可能是耳鸣的一个潜在触发因素的观点一致。