Isolating auditory-nerve contributions to electrocochleography by high-pass filtering: A better biomarker for cochlear nerve degeneration?

Viacheslav Vasilkov, M Charles Liberman, Stéphane F Maison

JASA express letters 2023 Feb

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In search of biomarkers for cochlear neural degeneration (CND) in electrocochleography from humans with normal thresholds, we high-pass and low-pass filtered the responses to separate contributions of auditory-nerve action potentials (N1) from hair-cell summating potentials (SP). The new N1 measure is better correlated with performance on difficult word-recognition tasks used as a proxy for CND. Furthermore, the paradoxical correlation between larger SPs and worse word scores, observed with classic electrocochleographic analysis, disappears with the new metric. Classic SP is simultaneous with and opposite in phase to an early neural contribution, and filtering separates the sources to eliminate this interference.

Citation

Viacheslav Vasilkov, M Charles Liberman, Stéphane F Maison. Isolating auditory-nerve contributions to electrocochleography by high-pass filtering: A better biomarker for cochlear nerve degeneration? JASA express letters. 2023 Feb;3(2):024401