Abstract
To explore whether patients with unilateral idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss (uISSNHL) have normal speech in noise (SIN) perception under different masking conditions after complete recovery of pure tone audiometry. Eight completely recovered uISSNHL patients were enrolled in ISSNHL group, while 8 normal-hearing adults matched with age, gender, and education experience were selected as the control group. Each group was tested SIN under four masking conditions, including noise and speech maskings with and without spatial separation cues. For both ISSNHL and control groups a two-way ANOVA showed a statistically significant effect of masking type (p = 0.007 vs p = 0.012). A significant effect of perceived spatial separation (p < 0.001 vs p < 0.001). A significant interaction between masking type and perceived spatial separation was found (p < 0.001 vs p < 0.001). A paired sample T-test showed that the SIN perception of the control group was statistically significant lower than that of ISSNHL patients only under speech masking without spatial separation cues (p = 0.011). There were still abnormalities in the auditory center shortly after complete recovery in the ISSNHL group (within 2 weeks). However, the auditory periphery and higher-level ability to use spatial cues was normal.
Highlights
To explore whether patients with unilateral idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss have normal speech in noise (SIN) perception under different masking conditions after complete recovery of pure tone audiometry
The present study is to investigate whether pure tone audiometry completely recovered unilateral idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss (uISSNHL) patients have normal behavior in speech perception under noise masking and speech masking with or without using a perceived spatial separation paradigm, including noise and speech maskings with or without spatial separation cues
Eight uISSNHL patients (6 females and 2 males, mean age = 44.9 years) met the following criteria were enrolled in the present study as the Idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss (ISSNHL) complete recovery (ISSNHL) group: (1) 18–65 years old; (2) acute unilateral SSNHL (≥ 30 dB) in three sequential frequencies of 0.25, 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 8 kHz compared to the healthy ear; (3) After treatment according to the Chinese sudden deafness guideline, 0.25, 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 8 kHz hearing defined as final hearing level better than 25 dB (6, /8) or reached healthy side hearing level (2/8)[15]; (4) Patients with middle ear disease, retro cochlear disorders, and congenital deafness had been excluded
Summary
To explore whether patients with unilateral idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss (uISSNHL) have normal speech in noise (SIN) perception under different masking conditions after complete recovery of pure tone audiometry. Each group was tested SIN under four masking conditions, including noise and speech maskings with and without spatial separation cues For both ISSNHL and control groups a two-way ANOVA showed a statistically significant effect of masking type (p = 0.007 vs p = 0.012). A paired sample T-test showed that the SIN perception of the control group was statistically significant lower than that of ISSNHL patients only under speech masking without spatial separation cues (p = 0.011). The SIN ability of patients after sudden deafness[9,10], to our knowledge, there have been no previous studies taking into account different mask conditions in the uISSNHL patients following complete recovery of pure tone hearing threshold. These results proved that SRM is one of the higher-level cognitive functions to improve speech intelligibility
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