Distortion product otoacoustic emission (DPOAE) amplitudes and latencies were measured in response to contralateral stimuli of noises with different spectral bands to examine the effects of noise bands on efferent suppression in 26 normally hearing adults. Four types of contralateral noise stimuli were white noise, 2 kHz low pass filtered noise, 2-4 kHz band pass filtered noise, and 4 kHz high pass filtered noise. The DPOAE amplitudes were measured at the f2 range of 1.0, 1.3, 1.6, 2.0, 2.5, 3.2, 4.0, 5.0, 6.3 kHz and DPOAE latencies were measured at the f2 range of 1, 3, 6 kHz without contralateral stimulation and with contralateral stimulation of 60 dB.
DPOAE amplitudes exhibited suppressive effects mainly on the mid frequency region of 1 to 2 kHz. White noise was more effective in suppressing DPOAEs than filtered noises were. The new measures of response interactions among noise bands also showed strong non-linear responses in lower frequecy range of DPOAE (1-2 kHz). In this experiment, contralateral masking did not appear to affect latencies of DPOAE since latencies of DPOAE showed no statistcally significant differences under contralateral noise stimulations (p>0.05).
KEY WORDS:Otoacoustic emission·Olivocochlear system·Contralateral suppression