Within this cohort study in the Netherlands, 7.8% of the children ages 9 to 11 years had low-frequency or high-frequency HL of at least 16 dB HL in 1 or both ears. A history of recurrent acute otitis media and lower maternal education seem to be independent risk factors for presumed SNHL in early childhood.

The prevalence of increased hearing levels (>15 dB HL) was 9.6%, and high-frequency hearing loss was found in 9.3%. The average hearing thresholds were 4.79 dB HL at low frequencies (0.5, 1, and 2 kHz) and 9.54 dB HL at high frequencies (3, 4, and 6 kHz). Most studies reported no significant association between pure-tone air thresholds and exposure to loud music. However, significant changes in hearing thresholds and otoacoustic emissions, and a high tinnitus prevalence suggest an association between music exposure and hearing loss in children.

In the past, researchers investigated silent lipreading in normal hearing subjects with functional neuroimaging tools and showed how the brain processes visual stimuli that are normally accompanied by an auditory counterpart. Previously, we showed activation differences between males and females in primary auditory cortex during silent lipreading, i.e. only the female group significantly activated the primary auditory region during lipreading. Here we report and discuss the overall activation pattern in males and females. We used positron emission tomography to study silent lipreading in 19 normal hearing subjects (nine females). Prior to scanning, subjects were tested on their lipreading ability and only good lipreaders were included in the study. Silent lipreading was compared with a static image. In the whole group, activations were found mainly in the left hemisphere with major clusters in superior temporal, inferior parietal, inferior frontal and precentral regions. The female group showed more clusters and these clusters were larger than in the male group. Sex differences were found mainly in right inferior frontal and left inferior parietal regions and to a lesser extent in bilateral angular and precentral gyri. The sex differences in the parietal multimodal region support our previous hypothesis that the male and female brain process visual speech stimuli differently without differences in overt lipreading ability. Specifically, females associate the visual speech image with the corresponding auditory speech sound whereas males focus more on the visual image itself.

Background We used PET to study cortical activation during auditory stimulation and found sex differences in the human primary auditory cortex (PAC). Regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) was measured in 10 male and 10 female volunteers while listening to sounds (music or white noise) and during a baseline (no auditory stimulation). Results and discussion We found a sex difference in activation of the left and right PAC when comparing music to noise. The PAC was more activated by music than by noise in both men and women. But this difference between the two stimuli was significantly higher in men than in women. To investigate whether this difference could be attributed to either music or noise, we compared both stimuli with the baseline and revealed that noise gave a significantly higher activation in the female PAC than in the male PAC. Moreover, the male group showed a deactivation in the right prefrontal cortex when comparing noise to the baseline, which was not present in the female group. Interestingly, the auditory and prefrontal regions are anatomically and functionally linked and the prefrontal cortex is known to be engaged in auditory tasks that involve sustained or selective auditory attention. Thus we hypothesize that differences in attention result in a different deactivation of the right prefrontal cortex, which in turn modulates the activation of the PAC and thus explains the sex differences found in the activation of the PAC. Conclusion Our results suggest that sex is an important factor in auditory brain studies.