Sensorineural hearing loss can be caused by many different things - eg aging, ototoxic medications, noise, a range of illnesses. It really depends on what aspect you want to study and why. This is the most important thing to work out before you go to your animal model.

Depending on what youre studying, the animal models range from zebra fish upwards. The use of mice and rats is less common than in many other fields while guinea pigs are used more often as they have larger ears which are reasonably similar to a humans.