title: An active oscillator model describes the statistics of spontaneous otoacoustic emissions.
abstract: Even in the absence of external stimulation, the cochleas of most humans emit very faint sounds below the threshold of hearing, sounds that are known as spontaneous otoacoustic emissions. They are a signature of the active amplification mechanism in the cochlea. Emissions occur at frequencies that are unique for an individual and change little over time. The statistics of a population of ears exhibit characteristic features such as a preferred relative frequency distance between emissions (interemission intervals). We propose a simplified cochlea model comprising an array of active nonlinear oscillators coupled both hydrodynamically and viscoelastically. The oscillators are subject to a weak spatial disorder that lends individuality to the simulated cochlea. Our model captures basic statistical features of the emissions: distributions of 1), emission frequencies; 2), number of emissions per ear; and 3), interemission intervals. In addition, the model reproduces systematic changes of the interemission intervals with frequency. We show that the mechanism for the preferred interemission interval in our model is the occurrence of synchronized clusters of oscillators.
authors.affiliation: Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Berlin, Germany; Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Dresden, Germany. Electronic address: florian.fruth@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Florian
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Fruth
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Dresden, Germany.
authors.forename: Frank
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Jülicher
authors.affiliation: Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Berlin, Germany; Department of Physics, Humboldt University Berlin, Berlin, Germany. Electronic address: benjamin.lindner@physik.hu-berlin.de.
authors.forename: Benjamin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Lindner
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D003051:Cochlea / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008959:Models, Neurological; D017711:Nonlinear Dynamics; D017084:Otoacoustic Emissions, Spontaneous / Q000502:physiology*; D010507:Periodicity; D013997:Time Factors