title: Frequency selectivity of phase-locking of complex sounds in the auditory nerve of the rat.
abstract: Frequency selectivity of single auditory nerve fibers in the auditory nerve of the rat was studied using pseudorandom noise as the stimulus. The noise was lowpass filtered ternary m-sequences. Period histograms of the discharges of single auditory nerve fibers, locked to the periodicity of the noise, were cross-correlated with one period of the noise to obtain estimates of the impulse response. These cross-correlograms were subsequently Fourier transformed to obtain estimates of the frequency transfer functions. Earlier results obtained using noise that was based on binary sequences as the stimulus showed a systematic dependence on stimulus intensity of the bandwidth and center frequency of the computer transfer functions. The results of the present study confirmed this dependence and showed that a linear model based upon first-order cross-correlations fit the histograms of response. It is concluded that phase-locked activity of single auditory nerve fibers accurately reproduces the half-wave rectified motion of the basilar membrane over a large range of sound intensities.
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001309:Auditory Threshold / Q000502:physiology; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory; D008144:Loudness Perception / Q000502:physiology; D009412:Nerve Fibers / Q000502:physiology; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology; D010897:Pitch Discrimination / Q000502:physiology*; D051381:Rats; D011919:Rats, Inbred Strains; D000159:Vestibulocochlear Nerve / Q000502:physiology*