School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Callier Center, The University of Texas at Dallas, 1966 Inwood Road, Dallas, Texas 75235, USA.
Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, Purdue University, 715 Clinic Drive, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907, USA.
J Acoust Soc Am. 2019 Nov;146(5):3710. doi: 10.1121/1.5132950.
The chinchilla animal model for noise-induced hearing loss has an extensive history spanning more than 50 years. Many behavioral, anatomical, and physiological characteristics of the chinchilla make it a valuable animal model for hearing science. These include similarities with human hearing frequency and intensity sensitivity, the ability to be trained behaviorally with acoustic stimuli relevant to human hearing, a docile nature that allows many physiological measures to be made in an awake state, physiological robustness that allows for data to be collected from all levels of the auditory system, and the ability to model various types of conductive and sensorineural hearing losses that mimic pathologies observed in humans. Given these attributes, chinchillas have been used repeatedly to study anatomical, physiological, and behavioral effects of continuous and impulse noise exposures that produce either temporary or permanent threshold shifts. Based on the mechanistic insights from noise-exposure studies, chinchillas have also been used in pre-clinical drug studies for the prevention and rescue of noise-induced hearing loss. This review paper highlights the role of the chinchilla model in hearing science, its important contributions, and its advantages and limitations.
豚鼠动物模型在噪声性听力损失方面的研究已有超过 50 年的历史。豚鼠在许多行为、解剖和生理特征上与人类相似，这使它成为听力科学的一个有价值的动物模型。这些特征包括：与人类听力频率和强度敏感性相似，能够用与人类听力相关的声刺激进行行为训练，温顺的天性使其能够在清醒状态下进行许多生理测量，生理稳定性强，能够从听觉系统的各个层面收集数据，以及能够模拟各种类型的传导性和感觉神经性听力损失，这些听力损失模拟了人类观察到的病理。鉴于这些特性，豚鼠已被反复用于研究连续和脉冲噪声暴露对解剖、生理和行为的影响，这些噪声暴露会导致暂时性或永久性阈值偏移。基于噪声暴露研究的机制见解，豚鼠也被用于预防和挽救噪声性听力损失的临床前药物研究。本文综述了豚鼠模型在听力科学中的作用、重要贡献以及其优势和局限性。
