Science Matters: Towards a Differential Diagnosis of Cochlear Synaptopathy as a Contributor to Sensorineural Hearing Loss

Martin Pienkowski expands on a series of studies on rodents and primates, showing that a fraction of inner hair cell (IHC) synapses with auditory nerve fibers (ANFs) could be destroyed by noise doses that left the hair cells intact, resulting in an auditory neuropathy, or “synaptopathy.”