Electrically-evoked frequency following responses in the auditory brainstem of cochlear impaired guinea pigs

It is still a difficult clinical issue to decide whether a patient is a suitable candidate for a cochlear implant and to plan postoperative rehabilitation, especially for some special cases, such as auditory neuropathy. A partial solution to these problems is to preoperatively evaluate the functional integrity of the auditory neural pathways. For evaluating the strength of phase-locking of auditory neurons, which was not reflected in previous methods using electrically evoked auditory brainstem response (EABRs), electrically evoked frequency following responses (EFFRs) recorded on normal guinea pigs have been studied in a previous study (He et al. 2014, PLoS One). To investigate the feasibility of EFFRs for clinic, a cochlear impaired model of guinea pig was used to compare the EFFRs for normal and impaired hearing, and to compare EFFRs and EABRs for the impaired hearing. Eight guinea pigs were used, and the experiment results showed that: (1) there were no significant differences of EFFRs between the nor...