Abstract
Nowadays, many people use portable players to enrich their daily life with enjoyable music. However, in noisy environments, the player volume is often set to extremely high levels in order to drown out the intense ambient noise and satisfy the appetite for music. Extensive and inappropriate usage of portable music players might cause subtle damages in the auditory system, which are not behaviorally detectable in an early stage of the hearing impairment progress. Here, by means of magnetoencephalography, we objectively examined detrimental effects of portable music player misusage on the population-level frequency tuning in the human auditory cortex. We compared two groups of young people: one group had listened to music with portable music players intensively for a long period of time, while the other group had not. Both groups performed equally and normally in standard audiological examinations (pure tone audiogram, speech test, and hearing-in-noise test). However, the objective magnetoencephalographic data demonstrated that the population-level frequency tuning in the auditory cortex of the portable music player users was significantly broadened compared to the non-users, when attention was distracted from the auditory modality; this group difference vanished when attention was directed to the auditory modality. Our conclusion is that extensive and inadequate usage of portable music players could cause subtle damages, which standard behavioral audiometric measures fail to detect in an early stage. However, these damages could lead to future irreversible hearing disorders, which would have a huge negative impact on the quality of life of those affected, and the society as a whole.
Highlights
It is well-established that exposure to loud noise can cause hearing impairment, hyperacusis, and tinnitus [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
The behavioral responses in each band-eliminated noise (BEN) condition during the MEG sessions were similar between the two groups with regard to reaction time (Table 1) and error rate (Table 2)
The behavioral results indicate that the participants performed better in case of wider band eliminated noise (BEN) conditions
Summary
It is well-established that exposure to loud noise can cause hearing impairment, hyperacusis, and tinnitus [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. -called portable music players (PMP) with insert earphones are regularly used by numerous people [11], by adolescents and young adults, and very often in noisy environments like trains or busses. In such environments, many users tend to listen at very high volumes to overcome the intense surrounding noise [12]. Even though it appears likely that exposure to very loud music via PMPs would lead to damage in the hearing system, this matter is still debated [13,14]. There are studies [15,16,17,18], that demonstrated that daily PMP usage can lead to hearing impairment and tinnitus, both of which are among the most common diseases in industrialized countries [3,19]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary 
Published Version (
Free)
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call