Evoked Acoustic Emission: Clinical Application

Abstract

Stimulated acoustic emissions were recorded in response to tonal stimuli at 60 dB p.e. SPL in a small group of normal-hearing adults. Power spectral analysis reveals that the evoked activity from each ear contains energy in preferential frequency bands and the change of stimulus frequency has only a minor effect on the power spectra, i.e. the maximum jumps from one spectral peak to another. Experiments with deconvolution demonstrate that the emission generating system at least at a fixed intensity can be regarded as being linear and characterized by its impulse response which is similar to the emission evoked by click stimuli. It is concluded that significant information is obtained by the click rather than by the tonal stimuli. The click-evoked emissions were also recorded from both ears in a consecutive series of 100 full-term and otherwise normal babies 2–4 days after birth. The emission amplitudes were of the same order of magnitude as those previously found in normal-hearing adults. Cross-correlation analysis was performed in order to evaluate reproducibility and the combination of amplitudes and correlation coefficients from supra-threshold recordings and the no-stimulus recordings reveals presence of a true emission from all ears tested. It is concluded that the cochlear echo can be recorded in normal-hearing newborns with an extremely low rate of type I errors.