Utilizing Information Theoretic Approach to Study Cochlear Neural Degeneration

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Cheema, Ahsan J., Puria, Sunil
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Cheema, Ahsan J.
Puria, Sunil
author_facet Cheema, Ahsan J.
Puria, Sunil
contents Hidden hearing loss, or cochlear neural degeneration (CND), disrupts suprathreshold auditory coding without affecting clinical thresholds, making it difficult to diagnose. We present an information-theoretic framework to evaluate speech stimuli that maximally reveal CND by quantifying mutual information (MI) loss between inner hair cell (IHC) receptor potentials and auditory nerve fiber (ANF) responses and acoustic input and ANF responses. Using a phenomenological auditory model, we simulated responses to 50 CVC words under clean, time-compressed, reverberant, and combined conditions across different presentation levels, with systematically varied survival of low-, medium-, and high-spontaneous-rate fibers. MI was computed channel-wise between IHC and ANF responses and integrated across characteristic frequencies. Information loss was defined relative to a normal-hearing baseline. Results demonstrate progressive MI loss with increasing CND, most pronounced for time-compressed speech, while reverberation produced comparatively smaller effects. These findings identify rapid, temporally dense speech as optimal probes for CND, informing the design of objective clinical diagnostics while revealing problems associated with reverberation as a probe.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_06671
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Utilizing Information Theoretic Approach to Study Cochlear Neural Degeneration
Cheema, Ahsan J.
Puria, Sunil
Neurons and Cognition
Information Theory
Audio and Speech Processing
Hidden hearing loss, or cochlear neural degeneration (CND), disrupts suprathreshold auditory coding without affecting clinical thresholds, making it difficult to diagnose. We present an information-theoretic framework to evaluate speech stimuli that maximally reveal CND by quantifying mutual information (MI) loss between inner hair cell (IHC) receptor potentials and auditory nerve fiber (ANF) responses and acoustic input and ANF responses. Using a phenomenological auditory model, we simulated responses to 50 CVC words under clean, time-compressed, reverberant, and combined conditions across different presentation levels, with systematically varied survival of low-, medium-, and high-spontaneous-rate fibers. MI was computed channel-wise between IHC and ANF responses and integrated across characteristic frequencies. Information loss was defined relative to a normal-hearing baseline. Results demonstrate progressive MI loss with increasing CND, most pronounced for time-compressed speech, while reverberation produced comparatively smaller effects. These findings identify rapid, temporally dense speech as optimal probes for CND, informing the design of objective clinical diagnostics while revealing problems associated with reverberation as a probe.
title Utilizing Information Theoretic Approach to Study Cochlear Neural Degeneration
topic Neurons and Cognition
Information Theory
Audio and Speech Processing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.06671