Korean J Otorhinolaryngol-Head Neck Surg.  2020 Dec;63(12):570-578. 10.3342/kjorl-hns.2020.00661.

The Effect of Long-Term Unilateral Deafness on Auditory Performance

• Kwak MY
• Kim DH
• Oh HS
• An YH
• Won JH
• Shim HJ

• KMID: 2511304
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.3342/kjorl-hns.2020.00661

Abstract

Background and Objectives
We investigated whether there are differences in auditory performance between the healthy ears of subjects with unilateral deafness (UD) and the control ears of subjects with normal hearing (NH) in both ears.
Subjects and Method
Sixteen subjects with acquired UD and 16 subjects with NH thresholds for both ears were enrolled. We compared the auditory performance of UD group and control group with NH in both ears.
Results
We found no meaningful differences in the three measures of psychoacoustic performance between the total healthy ears of subjects with UD and the ears of the control group. However, in the subgroup comparison, the left ears of subjects with right UD showed significantly poorer spectral-ripple discrimination (SRD) than the right ears of the subjects with left UD (p=0.006) and the ears of control subjects with NH (p=0.004).
Conclusion
Our findings indicate that after unilateral auditory deprivation, auditory processing is differentially affected by the side involved. In the subjects with acquired UD, the longterm hearing deprivation on the right side induced the down-regulation of central auditory process for SRD, but hearing deprivation on the left side did not affect SRD.

Keyword

Auditory cortex; Deafness; Hearing loss, unilateral; Plastics; Speech perception