Abstract
In normal-hearing persons and in patients with Menière's syndrome, critical bandwidths in the acoustic stapedius reflex were studied by means of two-tone complexes of variable frequency separation. The two tones in the complexes were geometrically distributed around the centre frequencies 300, 1000 and 3000 Hz. Patients with Menière's syndrome were selected because we wanted to study cases with a disease located to the inner ear. In normal-hearing persons, the critical bandwidths were found as in earlier work. In 7 out of 9 patients with Menière's syndrome, a critical band mechanism could not be demonstrated. In 2 patients the bandwidths differed from those found in normal ears. Although the results are not unambiguous, this study gives further support to the idea that the critical band mechanism is primarily located in the cochlea.