News Health & Medicine

Even moderate noise may harm hearing

Chronic, low-level sound exposure causes deficits in rats

By Rebecca Cheung

- More than 2 years ago

Constant low-level noise might cause hearing problems, a new study in rats finds. The discovery, published online May 15 in Nature Communications, suggests that extended exposure to noise at levels usually deemed safe for human ears could actually impair sound perception.

Maps of the part of the brain that processes sounds, called the auditory cortex, show that  rats exposed to low-level noise have fewer nerve cells that respond to highly-pulsed sound patterns than rats that lived the quiet life, a new study shows.