A model for the peripheral auditory nervous system of the grassfrog

Abstract

A model is presented which incorporates several data from the literature on isolated parts of the peripheral auditory nervous system into a coherent model. The usefulness of the model lies in the fact that it describes the functional properties of eighth nerve fibres and dorsal medullary nucleus neurons in response to monaural stimuli. The components are: a middle ear filter, transduction and tuning of the haircell, short-term adaptation, event generation with refractory properties, and coincidence detection. In a previous paper [Van Stokkum (1987), Hear. Res. 29, 223–235] a class of dorsal medullary nucleus neurons was described, which preferred fast intensity changes. Using a coincidence detection mechanism the proposed model reproduces the same preference. Variation of the parameters of the model successfully reproduces the range of response patterns which have been obtained from eighth nerve fibres and dorsal medullary nucleus neurons. With one set of parameters the output of the model in response to a set of spectrally and temporally structured stimuli qualitatively resembles the response of a single neuron. In this way the responses to the different stimuli are synthesized into a framework, which functionally describes the neuron.