Burke Kali, Ohman Kathleen A, Manohar Senthilvelan, Dent Micheal L
Department of Psychology, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, Buffalo, New York 14260, USA.
Center for Hearing and Deafness and Department of Communication Disorders and Sciences, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, Buffalo, New York 14260, USA.
J Acoust Soc Am. 2022 Feb;151(2):817. doi: 10.1121/10.0009359.
Blast trauma from explosions affects hearing and communication in a significant proportion of soldiers. Many veterans report difficulty communicating, especially in noisy and reverberant environments, which contributes to complex mental health problems including anxiety and depression. However, the relationship between communication and perceptual problems after a blast has received little scientific attention. In the current studies, the effects of blast trauma on the production and perception of ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) by CBA/CaJ mice, a common animal model for hearing and communication disorders, was explored. Overall, mice change the total number of vocalizations, the proportion produced of each syllable category, and the peak frequency, bandwidth, and duration of their vocalizations after blast exposure. Further, the perception of USVs is affected after blast trauma, with an immediate worsening of detection for most USV categories in the first 1-5 days after blasts, which later recovers. This study is the first to examine changes in the production and perception of communication signals after blast traumas in mice and is an important step towards developing treatments for blast-induced hearing and communication disorders.
爆炸产生的冲击伤会影响相当一部分士兵的听力和交流能力。许多退伍军人报告称存在交流困难，尤其是在嘈杂和有回声的环境中，这会导致包括焦虑和抑郁在内的复杂心理健康问题。然而，爆炸后交流与感知问题之间的关系几乎没有得到科学关注。在当前的研究中，我们探究了冲击伤对CBA/CaJ小鼠超声发声（USV）的产生和感知的影响，CBA/CaJ小鼠是一种常见的听力和交流障碍动物模型。总体而言，小鼠在受到爆炸暴露后，其发声总数、每个音节类别产生的比例以及发声的峰值频率、带宽和持续时间都会发生变化。此外，冲击伤后USV的感知也会受到影响，在爆炸后的前1至5天，大多数USV类别的检测能力会立即恶化，随后会恢复。这项研究首次考察了小鼠冲击伤后交流信号产生和感知的变化，是朝着开发治疗爆炸引起的听力和交流障碍的方法迈出的重要一步。
