Categorization of Gerbil auditory fiber responses

Abstract

This ongoing work is concerned with what the gerbil's ear tells the gerbil's brain. The responses of over 600 auditory nerve fibers to band-limited Gaussian white noise were recorded, and a smoothed, linear estimate of each fiber's impulse response was derived using a reverse correlation procedure and a state space model. In this paper, we investigate the impulse responses’ dependence on animal, stimulus amplitude, and tuning frequency. Despite great fiber response variability, we conclude that their responses tend to be briefer and more asymmetric for moderate to high frequencies.