<unk>  is a deficit in binaural integration of environmental information entering the auditory system. It is a disorder related to brain organization and function rather than what is typically considered a “hearing loss” (damage to the cochlea). It may be genetic or developmentally acquired or both. When animals are temporarily deprived of hearing from an early age, profound changes occur in the brain. Specifically, cell sizes in brainstem nuclei are reduced, the configuration of brainstem dendrites are altered and neurons respond in different ways to sounds presented to both the deprived and non-deprived ears (in cases of asymmetric deprivation). This last point is particularly important for listening tasks that require inputs from two ears to perform well. There are multiple auditory functions that rely on the computation of well calibrated inputs from the two ears. Chief among these is the ability to localize sound sources and separate what we want to hear from a background of noise. In the brainstem, the auditory system compares the timing and levels of sounds between the two ears to encode the location of sound sources (sounds that originate from our right as opposed to left side are louder and arrive earlier in our right ear). An electrophysiologic study demonstrated that children with<unk>  (referred to then as a "left-ear deficit") were less able to process information from their non-dominant ears when competing information is arriving at their dominant ears. The N400-P800 complex showed a strong and highly correlated response from the dominant and non-dominant ears among normal children while the response from children with<unk>  was uncorrelated and indicated an inability to separate information arriving at the non-dominant ear from the information arriving at the dominant ear. The same children also produced weaker fMRI responses from their non-dominant left ears when processing dichotic material in the scanner.
Amblyaudia
Lonomia
Paraphrenia
Pseudostrabismus
Amastia
Oneirophrenia
Paragraphia
Hamartia 