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The neural mechanism of hearing.III.—Animal investigations
Author(s) -
Davis H.,
Dworkin S.,
Lurie M.H.,
Katzman J.
Publication year - 1937
Publication title -
the laryngoscope
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.181
H-Index - 148
eISSN - 1531-4995
pISSN - 0023-852X
DOI - 10.1288/00005537-193707000-00001
Subject(s) - audiology , tone (literature) , mechanism (biology) , hearing loss , presentation (obstetrics) , psychology , medicine , surgery , linguistics , philosophy , epistemology
Two methods are available for measuring hearing acuity in animals. One is the conditioning or training method, along the lines developed by Pavlov (for example, see Andreyev, 1936). To test an animal's hearing acuity by this procedure, one must condition the animal to respond to tone stimuli of threshold value with some definite activity, such as opening a food box. This procedure is really not very different from clinical hearing tests in man, in which the subject is required, for example, to press a key when he hears a sound. The second method is the electrical, described by Wever and Bray (1930). Both methods have been applied separately to normal animals and to animals with defective hearing. A complete understanding of the relation of deafness to abnormalities of the hearing mechanism requires a combination of the two methods on the same animal, followed by microscopic studies of the anatomical abnormalities underlying the loss of function. We have been engaged upon such a study for the past year, and, although experiments are still in progress, the results so far obtained are sufficient to warrant presentation.