• Hengchao Chen, Lijuan Shi, Lijie Liu, Shankai Yin, Steven Aiken, and Jian Wang.
• Otolaryngology Research Institute, 6th Affiliated Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China.
• Neuroscience. 2019 May 21; 407: 41-52.

AbstractNoise-induced hidden hearing loss (NIHHL) has attracted great attention in hearing research and clinical audiology since the discovery of significant noise-induced synaptic damage in the absence of permanent threshold shifts (PTS) in animal models. Although the extant evidence for this damage is based on animal models, NIHHL likely occurs in humans as well. This review focuses on three issues concerning NIHHL that are somewhat controversial: (1) whether disrupted synapses can be re-established; (2) whether synaptic damage and repair are responsible for the initial temporal threshold shifts (TTS) and subsequent recovery; and (3) the relationship between the synaptic damage and repair processes and neural coding deficits. We conclude that, after a single, brief noise exposure, (1) the damaged and the totally destroyed synapses can be partially repaired, but the repaired synapses are functionally abnormal; (2) While deficits are observed in some aspects of neural responses related to temporal and intensity coding in the auditory nerve, we did not find strong evidence for hypothesized coding-in-noise deficits; (3) the sensitivity and the usefulness of the envelope following responses to amplitude modulation signals in detecting cochlear synaptopathy is questionable.Copyright © 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

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