Amplification of the poorer ear by StereoBiCROS in case of asymmetric sensorineural hearing loss: effect on tinnitus

Tinnitus is prevalent among patients suffering from Single-Sided Deafness (SSD) and Asymmetrical Hearing Loss (AHL). In addition to bothersome tinnitus in the poorer ear, these patients also report issues with understanding speech in noise and sound localization. The conventional treatment options offered to these patients to improve auditory abilities are cochlear implantation, bone conduction devices or Contralateral Routing Of Signal (CROS) hearing aids. It was recently found that the benefit of cochlear implantation for tinnitus associated with AHL/SSD was greater than the other two approaches. It is conceivable that the lack of stimulation provided to the poorer ear in these last approaches explains their modest impact on tinnitus perception. A new technology that combines the ability to reroute the sound from the poorer ear to the good ear (CROS system) while still stimulating the poorer ear with conventional sound amplification has recently been developed: the StereoBiCROS system. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of this new device on tinnitus. Twelve AHL and two SSD patients aged 70.7 ± 7.9 years with tinnitus were fitted with bilateral hearing aids that included 3 programs: Stereophonic, BiCROS and StereoBiCROS (CROS + bilateral amplification). The short-and long-term effect of the approach on tinnitus was assessed using a tinnitus Loudness Visual Analog Scale (VAS) and the Tinnitus Handicap Inventory (THI), respectively. Both the VAS and the THI were used before and one month after the hearing aid fitting. Of the 14 patients who used their hearing aids daily (12.6 ± 1.6 h per day) the StereoBiCROS program was the most used program (81.8 ± 20.5% of the time). The average THI total score decreased from 47 (± 22) to 15 (± 16) (p = 0.002) and the VAS-Loudness score decreased from 7 (± 1) to 2 (± 2) (p < 0.001) after the one-month trial period. In conclusion, StereoBiCROS stimulation strategy seems to offer an effective alternative to reduce tinnitus handicap and loudness for patients with AHL/SSD and tinnitus. This effect may be driven by sound amplification of the poorer ear

Les acouphènes

National audienceLes acouphènes sont des perceptions auditives qui ne sont pas liées à une source sonore dans l’environnement. Leur prévalence est assez considérable dans les pays développés et leur simple présence peut être gênante au point que la qualité de vie de certains patients est considérablement dégradée. Les acouphènes sont un symptôme qui peut résulter d’une multitude de causes. On parle d’origines périphériques des acouphènes lorsque l’activité neuronale liée aux acouphènes est présente dès le nerf cochléaire, ou d’acouphènes centraux si cette activité est générée directement au niveau des centres auditifs. Certains de ces mécanismes seront présentés lors de notre exposé

Les acouphènes

National audienceLes acouphènes sont des perceptions auditives qui ne sont pas liées à une source sonore dans l’environnement. Leur prévalence est assez considérable dans les pays développés et leur simple présence peut être gênante au point que la qualité de vie de certains patients est considérablement dégradée. Les acouphènes sont un symptôme qui peut résulter d’une multitude de causes. On parle d’origines périphériques des acouphènes lorsque l’activité neuronale liée aux acouphènes est présente dès le nerf cochléaire, ou d’acouphènes centraux si cette activité est générée directement au niveau des centres auditifs. Certains de ces mécanismes seront présentés lors de notre exposé

Assessing the Heterogeneity of Complaints Related to Tinnitus and Hyperacusis from an Unsupervised Machine Learning Approach: An Exploratory Study

International audienc

A psychoacoustic test for diagnosing hyperacusis based on ratings of natural sounds

International audienc

Audiologists and Tinnitus

International audienceAlthough tinnitus is highly prevalent among patients receiving audiology services, audiologists are generally untrained in tinnitus management. Audiology graduate programs, as a rule, do not provide comprehensive instruction in tinnitus clinical care. Training programs that do exist are inconsistent in their recommendations. Furthermore, no standards exist to prevent the delivery of unvetted audiologic services, which can be expensive for patients. Patients seeking professional services by an audiologist, therefore, have no basis upon which to be assured they will receive research-based care. The purpose of this article is to describe the current status of tinnitus management services that exist within the general field of audiology and to suggest specific approaches for improving those services

Contraction of the stapedius and tensor tympani muscles explored by tympanometry and pressure measurement in the external auditory canal

International audienc

A psychoacoustic test for misophonia assessment

International audienceMisophonia is a condition where a strong arousal response is triggered when hearing specific human generated sounds, like chewing, and/or repetitive tapping noises, like pen clicking. It is diagnosed with clinical interviews and questionnaires since no psychoacoustic tools exist to assess its presence. The present study was aimed at developing and testing a new assessment tool for misophonia. The method was inspired by an approach we have recently developed for hyperacusis. It consisted of presenting subjects (n = 253) with misophonic, pleasant, and unpleasant sounds in an online experiment. The task was to rate them on a pleasant to unpleasant visual analog scale. Subjects were labeled as misophonics (n = 78) or controls (n = 55) by using self-report questions and a misophonia questionnaire, the MisoQuest. There was a significant difference between controls and misophonics in the median global rating of misophonic sounds. On the other hand, median global rating of unpleasant, and pleasant sounds did not differ significantly. We selected a subset of the misophonic sounds to form the core discriminant sounds of misophonia (CDS Miso). A metric: the CDS score, was used to quantitatively measure misophonia, both with a global score and with subscores. The latter could specifically quantify aversion towards different sound sources/events, i.e., mouth, breathing/ nose, throat, and repetitive sounds. A receiver operating characteristic analysis showed that the method accurately classified subjects with and without misophonia (accuracy = 91%). The present study suggests that the psychoacoustic test we have developed can be used to assess misophonia reliably and quickly. Misophonia, literally hatred of sound 1 , is a condition where subjects experience negative emotional reactions (e.g., irritation, anger and/or disgust) 2,3 and a strong autonomic arousal response when hearing specific "trigger" sounds 4,5. These triggers most often contain human generated mouth sounds (e.g., chewing and slurping), breathing and nose sounds (e.g., heavy breathing and sniffing), throat sounds (e.g., swallowing and throat clearing), but also repetitive sounds of objects operated by humans (e.g., pen clicking and keyboard typing) 2-4. In some cases, visual repetitive stimuli, like leg-rocking or finger tapping, can act as misophonic triggers, a phenomenon known as "misokinesia" 2-4. The physical characteristics of sounds (e.g., intensity and frequency) only partially influence the reaction of misophonics to triggers, rather it is their psychological profile, previous experience, and the context in which triggers are experienced that are the most important 1,4,6,7. For instance, experiencing triggers when one cannot escape from the situation (e.g., plane trip) worsens negative reactions 4. Also, eating and chewing sounds are less annoying when originating from babies or animals, as it is "not their fault" if they are generating them 4. Similarly, an individual's own chewing sounds do not trigger a reaction and are often used as a coping mechanism to "cancel out" incoming triggers 3,4. Other coping mechanisms include listening to music, walking away, avoiding social situations, using earplugs/headphones, and asking the originator of the trigger to stop 2-4. Prevalence reports of misophonia show large variability and range from 6% to 49.1% 8-10. These differ considerably due to the different assessment methods and criterion that were used to define misophonia. Besides, misophonia severity varies: Naylor et al. 10 found that 37%, 12% and 0.3% of medical students had mild, moderate, and severe symptoms, respectively. They suggested that misophonia affects many people mildly, but only a few severely. Misophonia can be accompanied by different comorbidities such as obsessive-compulsive personality traits, depression, and anxiety 2,3,8,11. Perfectionism 2 , neuroticism 2,3,12 , difficulties with emotion regulation 12 , and high interoceptive sensibility 5 are also observed. Generally, no audiological problems are detected (e.g., audiogram, loudness discomfort levels, and speech audiometry) 2,3 , and cases of tinnitus and hyperacusis are scarce (2% an

Investigating the influence of masker and target properties on the dynamics of perceptual awareness under informational masking

International audienceInformational masking has been investigated using the detection of an auditory target embedded in a random multi-tone masker. The build-up of the target percept is influenced by the masker and target properties. Most studies dealing with discrimination performance neglect the dynamics of perceptual awareness. This study aims at investigating the dynamics of perceptual awareness using multi-level survival models in an informational masking paradigm by manipulating masker uncertainty, masker-target similarity and target repetition rate. Consistent with previous studies, it shows that high target repetition rates, low masker-target similarity and low masker uncertainty facilitate target detection. In the context of evidence accumulation models, these results can be interpreted by changes in the accumulation parameters. The probabilistic description of perceptual awareness provides a benchmark for the choice of target and masker parameters in order to examine the underlying cognitive and neural dynamics of perceptual awareness.Le masquage informationnel a été étudié en utilisant la détection d'une cible auditive intégrée dans un masque multitonalité aléatoire. L'élaboration de la perception de la cible est influencée par les propriétés du masqueur et de la cible. La plupart des études portant sur les performances de discrimination négligent la dynamique de la conscience perceptive. Cette étude vise à étudier la dynamique de la conscience perceptive à l'aide de modèles de survie multiniveaux dans un paradigme de masquage informationnel en manipulant l'incertitude du masqueur, la similarité entre le masqueur et la cible et le taux de répétition de la cible. En accord avec les études précédentes, l'étude montre qu'un taux élevé de répétition de la cible, une faible similarité entre le masqueur et la cible et une faible incertitude du masqueur facilitent la détection de la cible. Dans le contexte des modèles d'accumulation de preuves, ces résultats peuvent être interprétés par des changements dans les paramètres d'accumulation. La description probabiliste de la conscience perceptive fournit une référence pour le choix des paramètres de la cible et du masqueur afin d'examiner la dynamique cognitive et neuronale sous-jacente de la conscience perceptive

Information-Theoretic Approaches in EEG Correlates of Auditory Perceptual Awareness under Informational Masking

In informational masking paradigms, the successful segregation between the target and masker creates auditory perceptual awareness. The dynamics of the build-up of auditory perception is based on a set of interactions between bottom–up and top–down processes that generate neuronal modifications within the brain network activity. These neural changes are studied here using event-related potentials (ERPs), entropy, and integrated information, leading to several measures applied to electroencephalogram signals. The main findings show that the auditory perceptual awareness stimulated functional activation in the fronto-temporo-parietal brain network through (i) negative temporal and positive centro-parietal ERP components; (ii) an enhanced processing of multi-information in the temporal cortex; and (iii) an increase in informational content in the fronto-central cortex. These different results provide information-based experimental evidence about the functional activation of the fronto-temporo-parietal brain network during auditory perceptual awareness