Abstract
Recently the authors developed a theoretical model of the membrane currents of an auditory hair cell based on the experimental work of Hudspeth and colleagues on bullfrog saccular hair cells. In this paper we briefly review this model, and then couple it to a model of an afferent synapse of the auditory hair cell. The model formulated here for the chemical synapse accounts for both exocytotic and endocytotic processes and identifies specific ionic dependencies in the combined hair cell-synapse system. Based on a calcium current stimulus, various numerical simulations of the model are made, and its post-synaptic firing rate response is compared with experiment. Qualitative agreement between experiment and model behavior is achieved for various single and double tone experiments. These tests include onset firing rate versus steady state firing rate, decrement response as a function of stimulus intensity, and the decrement response versus the time interval between test and adapting tones.
Published Version
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