Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering Commons^™

Non-Invasive Diagnostic Measures Of Sensorineural Hearing Loss In Chinchillas, Hannah M. Ginsberg, Satyabrata Parida, Michael G. Heinz

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

According to the World Health Organization, disabling hearing loss affects nearly 466 million people worldwide. Sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL), which is characterized as damage to the inner ear (e.g., cochlear hair cells) and/or to the neural pathways connecting the inner ear and brain, accounts for 90% of all disabling hearing loss. More concerning is that significant perceptual and physiological aspects of SNHL remain “hidden” from standard clinical diagnostics. Hidden hearing loss (HHL) manifests as the inability to understand speech in loud, noisy environments (e.g., listening in a noisy restaurant) despite a normal audiogram (i.e., normal detection of soft sounds). Recently, …