The cochlear ear horn: geometric origin of tonotopic variations in auditory signal processing.

ABSTRACT: While separating sounds into frequency components and subsequently converting them into patterns of neural firing, the mammalian cochlea processes signal components in ways that depend strongly on frequency. Indeed, both the temporal structure of the response to transient stimuli and the sharpness of frequency tuning differ dramatically between the apical and basal (i.e., the low- and high-frequency) regions of the cochlea. Although the mechanisms that give rise to these pronounced differences remain incompletely understood, they are generally attributed to tonotopic variations in the constituent hair cells or cytoarchitecture of the organ of Corti. As counterpoint to this view, we present a general acoustic treatment of the horn-like geometry of the cochlea, accompanied by a simple 3-D mo

SUBMITTER: Altoe A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7689495 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature