Event Abstract Back to Event A model of the auditory nerve for acoustic- and electric excitation Michele Nicoletti1*, Marek Rudnicki1 and Werner Hemmert1 1 Technische Universität München, Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Germany Auditory nerve fibers (ANF) convey information about sound to the central nervous system. For both normal hearing subjects and cochlear implant patients the most drastic step of sound coding for neuronal processing is when the analog signal is converted into discrete nerve-action potentials. As any information lost during this process is no longer available for neural processing, it is important to understand the underlying principles of sound coding in the intact auditory system and the limitations in the case of direct electrical stimulation of the auditory nerve. Here we focus on a model of spiral ganglion type I neurons with Hodgkin-Huxley type ion channels, which are also found in cochlear nucleus neurons. Depending on the task, we model the neurons at different levels of detail. Our results show that for acoustic stimuli, the model provides realistic refractoriness and generates more realistic spike trains compared to a spike generator with absolute and exponentially decaying refractoriness added. Not surprisingly, speech discrimination in electrical hearing is lower than in acoustic hearing. On the other hand, the analysis of transmitted information shows that the temporal precision of coding seems to be very high because at levels well above threshold, action potentials are elicited quasi-deterministic by the electrical stimuli. We argue that CIS strategies a) waste as much as 50% of this information and b) much of the information coded in the time domain can not be retrieved by the neurons in the cochlear nucleus. Acknowledgements Funded within the Munich Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (reference number 01GQ0441) and MED-EL Innsbruck. Keywords: computational neuroscience Conference: Bernstein Conference on Computational Neuroscience, Berlin, Germany, 27 Sep - 1 Oct, 2010. Presentation Type: Presentation Topic: Bernstein Conference on Computational Neuroscience Citation: Nicoletti M, Rudnicki M and Hemmert W (2010). A model of the auditory nerve for acoustic- and electric excitation. Front. Comput. Neurosci. Conference Abstract: Bernstein Conference on Computational Neuroscience. doi: 10.3389/conf.fncom.2010.51.00104 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 06 Sep 2010; Published Online: 23 Sep 2010. * Correspondence: Dr. Michele Nicoletti, Technische Universität München, Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, München, Germany, michele.nicoletti@tum.de Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Michele Nicoletti Marek Rudnicki Werner Hemmert Google Michele Nicoletti Marek Rudnicki Werner Hemmert Google Scholar Michele Nicoletti Marek Rudnicki Werner Hemmert PubMed Michele Nicoletti Marek Rudnicki Werner Hemmert Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.