Common causes of hearing loss in humans-exposure to loud noise or ototoxic drugs and
aging-often damage sensory hair cells, reflected as elevated thresholds on the clinical …

Tinnitus is a phantom auditory sensation that reduces quality of life for millions of people
worldwide, and for which there is no medical cure. Most cases of tinnitus are associated with …

Recent work suggests that hair cells are not the most vulnerable elements in the inner ear;
rather, it is the synapses between hair cells and cochlear nerve terminals that degenerate …

The classic view of sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) is that the “primary” targets are hair
cells, and that cochlear-nerve loss is “secondary” to hair cell degeneration. Our recent work …

Acoustic overexposure can cause a permanent loss of auditory nerve fibers without
destroying cochlear sensory cells, despite complete recovery of cochlear thresholds, as …

Presbycusis, or age‐related hearing loss (ARHL), occurs in most mammals with variations in
the age of onset, rate of decline, and magnitude of degeneration in the central nervous …

Animal studies demonstrate that noise exposure can permanently damage the synapses
between inner hair cells and auditory nerve fibers, even when outer hair cells are intact and …

Recent animal work has suggested that cochlear synapses are more vulnerable than hair
cells in both noise-induced and age-related hearing loss. This synaptopathy is invisible in …

Background Noise-induced hearing loss is a leading cause of occupational and recreational
injury and disease, and a major determinant of age-related hearing loss. No therapeutic …

Cochlear synaptic loss, rather than hair cell death, is the earliest sign of damage in both
noise-and age-related hearing impairment (;). Here, we compare cochlear aging after two …