Abstract
The cochlea plays a crucial role in mammal hearing. The basic function of the cochlea is to map sounds of different frequencies onto corresponding characteristic positions on the basilar membrane (BM). Sounds enter the fluid-filled cochlea and cause deflection of the BM due to pressure differences between the cochlear fluid chambers. These deflections travel along the cochlea, increasing in amplitude, until a frequency-dependent characteristic position and then decay away rapidly. The hair cells can detect these deflections and encode them as neural signals. Modelling the mechanics of the cochlea is of help in interpreting experimental observations and also can provide predictions of the results of experiments that cannot currently be performed due to technical limitations. This paper focuses on reviewing the numerical modelling of the mechanical and electrical processes in the cochlea, which include fluid coupling, micromechanics, the cochlear amplifier, nonlinearity, and electrical coupling.
Highlights
This review will focus on numerical modelling of the mechanical and electrical processes that lead to the vibrations of the basilar membrane (BM), the cochlear amplifier, and other nonlinear behaviours, in the mammalian cochlea
Lim and Steele [11] adopted a hybrid WKBnumeric solution for their nonlinear active cochlear model, in which the WKB method was used in the short wave region and numerical Runge-Kutta method was used in the longwave region, to keep computation fast and efficient
Ni [121] applied the elemental method [70] to study the effects of coiling on the coupled response by assuming that the BM dynamic is not affected by the coiling and the results show that the difference between the coiled and the straight model becomes larger at low frequencies, when the characteristic place moves towards the apex, reaffirming that the curvature plays a more important role close to the apical end of the cochlea
Summary
This review will focus on numerical modelling of the mechanical and electrical processes that lead to the vibrations of the BM, the cochlear amplifier, and other nonlinear behaviours, in the mammalian cochlea. The principal role of the cochlea is to transform the hair cell motions induced by the incoming sound wave into electrical signals These electrical signals travel as action potentials along the neural auditory pathway to structures in the brainstem for further processing. The principal role of the cochlea is to transform the hair cell motion induced by the incoming sound wave into electrical signals These electrical signals travel as action potentials along the auditory pathway to structures in the brainstem for further processing. Lim and Steele [11] adopted a hybrid WKBnumeric solution for their nonlinear active cochlear model, in which the WKB method was used in the short wave region and numerical Runge-Kutta method was used in the longwave region, to keep computation fast and efficient
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