It has been generally accepted that excessive exposure to loud music causes various hearing symptoms (e.g. tinnitus) and consequently leads to a risk of permanent hearing damage, known as noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL). Such potential risk of NIHL due to loud music exposure has been widely investigated in musicians and people working in music venues. With advancements in sound technology and rapid developments in the music industry, increasing numbers of people, particularly adolescents and young adults, are exposing themselves to music on a voluntary basis at potentially harmful levels, and over a substantial period of time, which can also cause NIHL. However, because of insufficient audiometric evidence of hearing loss caused purely by music exposure, there is still disagreement and speculation about the risk of hearing loss from music exposure alone. Many studies have suggested using advanced audiological measurements as more sensitive and efficient tools to monitor hearing status as early indicators of cochlear dysfunction. The purpose of this review is to provide further insight into the potential risk of hearing loss caused by exposure to loud music, and thus contribute to further raising awareness of music induced hearing loss.

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This report describes relationships between middle-ear measurements of acoustic admittance and energy reflectance (YR) and measurements of hearing status using visual reinforcement audiometry in a neonatal hearing-screening population. Analyses were performed on 2638 ears in which combined measurements were obtained [Norton et al., Ear Hear. 21, 348-356 (2000)]. The measurements included distortion-product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAE), transient evoked otoacoustic emissions (TEOAE), and auditory brainstem responses (ABR). Models to predict hearing status using DPOAEs, TEOAEs, or ABRs were each improved by the addition of the YR factors as interactions, in which factors were calculated using factor loadings from Keefe et al. [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 113, 389-406 (2003)]. This result suggests that information on middle-ear status improves the ability to predict hearing status. The YR factors were used to construct a middle-ear dysfunction test on 1027 normal-hearing ears in which DPOAE and TEOAE responses were either both present or both absent, the latter condition being viewed as indicative of middle-ear dysfunction. The middle-ear dysfunction test classified these ears with a nonparametric area (A) under the relative operating characteristic curve of A = 0.86, and classified normal-hearing ears that failed two-stage hearing-screening tests with areas A = 0.84 for DPOAE/ABR, and A = 0.81 for TEOAE/ABR tests. The middle-ear dysfunction test adequately generalized to a new sample population (A = 0.82).

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Within this study we have examined the particular hearing complaints of patients being considered for a cochlear implant and the specific benefits/shortcomings experienced by implanted patients using open-ended questionnaires. As we expected, the difficulty of hearing general conversation was the most common individual hearing complaint. However, 45% of complaints were concentrated in the 'psychosocial' category, which was significantly higher than that found among general audiological rehabilitation patients. The average number of benefits listed by patients having implants was significantly higher than that of the shortcomings. Moreover, the main benefits listed were focused on the acoustical and psychological factors, e.g. 'environmental sound awareness', 'general conversation easier' and 'feeling of self-confidence'. The main shortcomings were related to the acoustical and practical areas, e.g. hearing difficulty in noisy background, processor being cumbersome.

This report describes the extent to which ear-canal acoustic admittance and energy reflectance (YR) in human neonates (1) predict otoacoustic emission (OAE) levels and auditory brainstem response (ABR) latencies, and (2) classify OAE and ABR responses as present or absent. Analyses are reported on a subset of ears in which hearing screening measurements were obtained previously [Norton et al., Ear. Hear. 21, 348-356 (2000a)]. Tests on 1405 ears included YR, distortion-product OAEs, transient-evoked OAEs, and ABR. Principal components analysis reduced the 33 YR variables to 5-7 factors. OAE levels decreased and ABR latencies increased with increasing high-frequency energy reflectance. Up to 28% of the variance in OAE levels and 12% of the variance in ABR wave-V latencies were explained by these factors. Thus, the YR response indirectly encodes information on inter-ear variations in forward and reverse middle-ear transmission. The YR factors classify OAEs with an area under the relative operating characteristic (ROC) curve as high as 0.79, suggesting that middle-ear dysfunction is partly responsible for the inability to record OAEs in some ears. The YR factors classified ABR responses less well, with ROC areas of 0.64 for predicting wave-V latency and 0.56 for predicting Fsp.

This paper highlights the importance of psychological models and cross-cultural research in the area of hearing help-seeking and hearing-aid uptake, and consequently some directions for future research are proposed.