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Objective To investigate the effect of combination therapy (fluoxetine + alprazolam) and fluoxetine alone in treatment of tinnitus. Material and methods 147 participants with chronic tinnitus were divided into three groups (fluoxetine, fluoxetine+ alprazolam, and placebo). Tinnitus Handicap Inventory (THI), Visual Analogue Scale (VAS), Tinnitus Severity Index (TSI), Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) used to assess tinnitus. Effect size according to partial Eta square calculated and level of significance was considered as P Results Fluoxetine reduced VAS, THI, BDI, and increased BAI. The combination therapy significantly reduced VAS, THI, BAI, and BDI. None of them reduced the TSI. The effect size for BAI and BDI were 0.135 (medium) and 0.075 (small), respectively. There was no significant difference between combination and single-drug therapy. Conclusion Both groups improved THI and VAS. Combination therapy was not significantly different from single-drug treatment. Combination therapy can be considered only according to the psychiatric needs of patients.

With the expansion of the applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning in various areas, many challenges have arisen in the training of learning algorithms. One of the most important challenges is the learning in imbalanced datasets. The imbalanced data generally refers to a classification problem where the number of data samples per class is not equally distributed. Typically there is a large amount of data for one class (referred to as the majority class) and much fewer data for the other class (referred to as the minority class). In such datasets, learning algorithms are biased toward learning the majority class to reach better accuracy, which leads to the lack of learning in minority class data. This article first introduces a method called neighbor competition scoring (NCS) for assigning scores to samples. Each data point is assigned a lower score if it is farther away from its class samples or closer to the samples of other classes. Then, with the help of these scores, neighbor competition undersampling (NCU) method is presented for undersampling the majority class samples that are less important than other samples. The proposed method has been compared with some popular data-based methods in 10 datasets and has performed better according to the experiments.

Background and Objectives Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a disorder that usually occurs in the elderly, leading to dementia in some progressive cases. The purpose of this study is to examine the utility of central auditory processing tests as early diagnostic tools for identifying the elderly with MCI. Subjects and Methods This study was conducted on 20 elderly patients with MCI and 20 healthy matched peers. The speech perception ability in a quiet environment and in the presence of background noise and also temporal resolution were assessed by using Speech Perception in Noise (SPIN) and Gap in Noise (GIN) tests, respectively. Results The results indicated that the ability to understand speech in a quiet environment did not differ significantly between the two groups. However, SPIN at the three signal-tonoise ratios and the temporal resolution scores were significantly different between the two groups (p

Introduction: Deficient auditory processing can cause problems with speech perception and affect the development and evolution of reading skills. The efferent auditory pathway has an important role in normal auditory system functions like speech-in-noise perception, but there is still no general agreement on this. Objective: To study the performance of the efferent auditory system in a group of children with reading impairment in comparison with normal reading and evaluation of its relationship with speech-in-noise perception. Methods: A total of 53 children between the ages of 8–12 years were selected for the study of which 27 were with reading impairment and 26 were normal reading children. Transient evoked otoacoustic emissions suppression and auditory recognition of words-in-noise test were performed for all the children. Results: The average amplitude of transient evoked otoacoustic emissions suppression showed a significant difference between the two groups in the right (p = 0.004) and in the left ear (p = 0.028). Assessment of the relationship between transient evoked otoacoustic emissions suppression and monaural auditory recognition of words-in-noise scores showed a significant moderate negative relationship only in the right ear (p = 0.034, r = −0.41) of the normal reading children. Binaural auditory recognition of words-in-noise scores were significantly correlated with the amplitude of transient evoked otoacoustic emissions suppression in the right ear (p

Increased serum bilirubin levels during infancy increase the risk of hearing loss in infants. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between pure-tone audiometry hearing thresholds and thresholds estimated using auditory steady-state responses (ASSRs) in children with a history of neonatal hyperbilirubinemia, and to evaluate the usefulness of 90-Hz ASSR in estimating hearing thresholds in children. This study was conducted on 26 children (13 girls and 13 boys) who were aged 2.4-11 years and had a history of neonatal hyperbilirubinemia (bilirubin level17 mg/dL). ASSR thresholds were compared with behavioral thresholds and were interpreted after considering the amount and type of hearing loss. Of the 26 children, 12 had normal hearing thresholds, and 14 had varying degrees of sensorineural hearing loss. In general, a high correlation (r ≥ 0.81, p0.01) was found between the ASSR and behavioral thresholds. The highest correlation was observed at 2,000 Hz (r = 0.88, p0.01). No significant difference was observed (p0.13) between mean behavioral and ASSR thresholds at 52 studied ears. The results of this study showed that 90-Hz ASSR assessments provide reliable estimates of behavioral hearing thresholds in children who have a history of neonatal hyperbilirubinemia and sensorineural hearing loss or normal hearing.