Abstract
The harmonic structure of gross cochlear potentials has been studied in considerable detail (Newman et al., 1937; Wever and Bray, 1938; Wever and Lawrence, 1954; Dallos, 1973). In contrast, harmonic distortion in intracellular responses has received only minimal attention. Thus the presence of harmonic distortion may only be surmised from published response waveforms in a variety of hair cell types, both reptilian and mammalian (Russell and Sellick, 1978; Crawford and Fettiplace, 1981; Holton and Weiss, 1983). A quantitative description of the harmonic content of tone-evoked responses from hair cells has not been provided. This is unfortunate since knowledge of distortion generation is essential for the description of a nonlinear transducer, such as the hair cell. Moreover, certain nonlinear transfer characteristics may be fully identified from the harmonic structure of their output. Consequently, a determination of the harmonic content of hair cell receptor potentials is a desirable objective. This is particularly true for mammalian hair cells where a comparison between harmonic production by inner and outer hair cells may reveal essential information about their, conceivably different, transducer properties. Preliminary data on harmonic generation by mammalian hair cells have been reported (Dallos and Oesterle, 1985).
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© 1986 Plenum Press, New York
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Dallos, P., Cheatham, M.A., Oesterle, E. (1986). Harmonic Components in Hair Cell Responses. In: Moore, B.C.J., Patterson, R.D. (eds) Auditory Frequency Selectivity. Nato ASI Series, vol 119. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-2247-4_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-2247-4_8
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