Recruitment
Recruitment
Recruitment, or loudness recruitment, is the phenomenon of abnormally rapid growth of loudness with increase in sound intensity, which is encountered in patients with sensorineural (especially cochlear sensory) hearing loss. Thus patients have difficulty with sounds of low to moderate intensity ("Speak up, doctor") but intense sounds are uncomfortably loud ("There’s no need to shout, doctor!"). Speech discrimination is relatively unimpaired in conductive hearing loss.
"Recruitment" may also be used to refer to pathological "spread" of tendon reflexes, implying broadening of their receptive field.
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