Studies of the damped oscillatory response of the auditory frequency analyzer.

Abstract

AbstractThe temporal characteristics (system impulse response) of the peripheral, auditory spectrum analyzer, up to the level of the neural excitation, has been studied. This was accomplished by recording the average firing rate of single units in the rat cochlear nucleus in response to paired clicks in which the interval between clicks was varied over a large range. The results show that the system impulse response of all units studied was a damped oscillation. The frequency of the oscillation was equal to the characteristic frequency of the unit. On basis of these recorded responses the auto‐correlation of the system impulse response was computed. It was furthermore found that bandwidth values determined on the basis of the derived autocorrelation functions were smaller than those estimated from tuning curves and isorate curves. It is concluded that the auditory system of the rat has a higher spectral resolution in regards to double click stimulation than it has for stimulation with single pure tones. The study furthermore indicates that the sharpening of the spectral resolution of ‘the auditory system represented by unit responses in the rat cochlear nucleus is not accomplished by interactions between the time integrated output from a number of hair cells.