Modeling sensorineural hearing loss

A recent study indicates that 20 million people in the United States have significant sensorineural hearing loss.

Approximately 95% of those people have partial losses, with varying degrees of residual hearing.

These percentages are similar in other developed countries.

What changes in the function of the cochlea or inner ear cause such losses?

What does the world sound like to the 19 million people with residual hearing?

How should we transform sounds to correct for the hearing loss and maximize restoration of normal hearing?

Answers to such questions require detailed models of the way that sounds are processed by the nervous system, both for listeners with normal hearing and for those with sensorineural hearing loss.

This book contains chapters describing the work of 25 different research groups.