THE EXAMINATION OF STIMULUS SOUND FOR OTO-ACOUSTIC EMISSION FROM NORMAL EAR

Abstract

Oto-acoustic emission (OAE) is thought to be originated from the active sound transduction mechanism in the cochlea. The clinical application of OAE is desired because it must reflect cochleal function, and is recorded easily and noninvasively. Effective and simplified stimulus condition is needed to be selected. For this purpose, stimulated OAEs evoked by click sounds and short tone bursts were compared
The OAEs evoked by click and tone bursts were recorded from 50 normal hearing ears with type A tympanogram. The frequency of tone burst was varied according to the resonance frequency of the examining ear-probe system. The frequency of OAE evoked by click corresponded with that by tone burst and the pseudothresholds were statistically not differ each other. These facts suggested that click stimulus is essentially identical to the tone burst stimulus. The amplitudes, durations and the endpoint times of OAE were statistically significantly larger in tone bursts evoked OAE than in click sound evoked ones (p<0.01). These facts indicated the tone burst evoked OAE were more easily detectable from the noise level than those evoked by click sounds.