Abstract
Is human hearing more sharply tuned than other mammals? This has been a heavily debated subject in the field of cochlear mechanics. The debate continues partially due to lack of non-invasive methods to estimate human cochlear tuning accurately. Recently, Gorga et al. (2011, JASA) derived tuning curves from suppression of distortion product (DP) otoacoustic emissions (OAEs) in normal-hearing human ears. Frequencies of the primary tones were varied from 0.5 to 8 kHz. Sharpness of tuning was analyzed in terms of the Q-value of equivalent rectangular bandwith, which ranged from 4 to 10 at the lowest stimulus level tested. The Q-values were similar to that of psychoacoustic tuning but lower than inferred from latencies of stimulus-frequency OAEs (Shera et al. 2002, PNAS). In the present work, we simulate DPOAE suppression based on a computer model of cochlear mechanics (Liu and Neely, 2010, JASA). The simulated DPOAE suppression tuning curves (STCs) resemble those obtained in experiments but discrepancies remain. At high frequencies, the simulated DPOAE STCs are not as sharply tuned as the magnitude response of traveling waves in the model. Confounding factors and interpretation of results will be discussed. (Supported by Taiwan's NSC and NTHU)
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