Effects of sensorineural hearing loss on formant-frequency discrimination: Measurements and models

This study concerns the effect of hearing loss on discrimination of formant frequencies in vowels. In the response of the healthy ear to a harmonic sound, auditory-nerve (AN) rate functions fluctuate at the fundamental frequency, F0. Responses of inner-hair-cells (IHCs) tuned near spectral peaks are captured (or dominated) by a single harmonic, resulting in lower fluctuation depths than responses of IHCs tuned between spectral peaks. Therefore, …