RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Cochlear Phase and Amplitude Retrieved from the Auditory Nerve at Arbitrary Frequencies
JF The Journal of Neuroscience
JO J. Neurosci.
FD Society for Neuroscience
SP 9194
OP 9198
DO 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.23-27-09194.2003
VO 23
IS 27
A1 Marcel van der Heijden
A1 Philip X. Joris
YR 2003
UL http://www.jneurosci.org/content/23/27/9194.abstract
AB It is currently impossible to mechanically measure the overall vibration pattern of the intact mammalian cochlea because of its inaccessibility and vulnerability. At first sight, data from the auditory nerve are a poor substitute because of their limited temporal resolution. The nonlinear character of neural coding, however, causes low-frequency interactions among the components of multitone stimuli. We designed a novel stimulus for which these interactions take a particularly systematic form, and we recorded the response of the auditory nerve to this stimulus. A careful analysis of interactions in the data allowed us to reconstruct frequency transfer functions (both their amplitude and their phase) at multiple points spanning the entire length of the cochlea. The generic character of our stimuli and analysis suggests its wider use in nonlinear system analysis, particularly in those instances in which limitations in temporal resolution restrict the use of customary methods.