A hair-cell and the nerve connected to it is called a Basic Sensory Unit.
A hair-cell and the nerve that connects with it is called the Basic Sensory Unit. If either of these is damaged, a sensory-neural hearing loss will result.
This is quite a different kind of loss than the conductive loss which we discussed earlier. Here are three differences.
1) Although a sensory neural loss may be so mild that people do not even know that they have it, it can also, unlike a conductive loss, be total, with no residual hearing remaining at all. Granted this is rare, and there is usually some residual hearing. However, this often goes undeveloped and unused by deaf individuals.
2) Unlike a conductive loss which is generally equal across all frequencies, a sensory neural loss typically effects some frequencies more than others. And almost always, it is the higher frequencies that are typically effected first.