The intra-aural muscle reflex in humans is more sensitive to binaural and ipsilateral stimulation, as well as complex sounds, and can be modeled as a linear envelope detector followed by an integrator.
Acoustic reflex thresholds may vary by stimulation type; leaves open applicability to clinical practice without further validation.
The intra-aural muscle reflex in man is examined through the change in the acoustic impedance as measured in the auricular canal. The reflex is elicited either by a monaural or binaural sound stimulus, and the acoustic impedance change is measured on both ears simultaneously. When only one ear is stimulated, the sensitivity of the muscle reflex is found to be greater for ipsilateral stimulation than for contralateral stimulation. When both ears are stimulated, the sensitivity of the reflex is greater than for ipsilateral stimulation. Complex sounds with low-peak factor, such as bandpass-filtered noise, are more efficient than sinusoids in eliciting the muscle reflex. Reflex sensitivity was measured in terms of the rms stimulus level required for a constant impedance change. The muscle reflex is approximated to a mechanism consisting of a linear envelope detector followed by an integrator. The frequency-domain transfer function of this mechanism is found to be a convenient description from which response to various stimulus envelopes can be calculated. This general description is also useful in the study of the amplitude regulation of the muscle reflex.
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Aage R. Møller (1962) studied this question.