Abstract
I will discuss the damage to the peripheral auditory system which results from acoustic trauma and how these defecits can be used to create an animal model of presbycusis. In our study, we examined the ability of the peripheral auditory system to encode the vowel /eh/ after acoustic trauma to the region of the cochlea which normally responds to the second and third formant frequencies. An abnormal temporal-place representation of the vowel was present in the damaged cochlea, as shown by an auditory-nerve population study. Implications of this abnormal response pattern for hearing aid design will be discussed.