The Magnitude of Contralateral Suppression of Otoacoustic Emissions Is Ear- and Age-Dependent

The maturation of the uncrossed medial olivocochlear (UMOC) efferent remains poorly documented to date. The UMOC efferent system allows listeners to not only detect but also to process, recognize, and discriminate auditory stimuli. Its fibers can be explored non-invasively by recording the effect of contralateral acoustic stimulation (CAS), resulting in a decrease in the amplitude of transient evoked otoacoustic emissions (TEOAE). The objective of the present cross-sectional study was to investigate how the effectiveness of this system varies with age in healthy subjects aged 8 years to adulthood. For this purpose, 120 right-handed native French-speaking subjects (57 females and 63 males) were divided into five age groups of 24 subjects each: 8y–10y, 10y–11y6m, 11y6m–13y, 13y–17y, and ≥18y. TEOAE amplitudes with and without CAS were recorded. The equivalent attenuation (EA) was calculated, corresponding to the change in TEOAE amplitude equivalent to the effect generated by CAS. General linear models were performed to control for the effect of ear, sex, and age on EA. No sex effect was found. A stronger EA was consistently found regardless of age group in the right ear compared to the left. In contrast to the right ear, for which, on average, EA remained constant across age groups, an increasingly weaker TEOAE suppression effect with age was found in the left ear, reinforcing the asymmetrical functioning of the UMOC efferent system in favor of the right ear in adulthood. Further studies are needed to investigate the lateralization of the UMOC efferent system and its changes over time in cases of atypical or reversed cortical asymmetries, especially in subjects with specific learning disorders.