Definition
Sequences of action potentials (spikes) of individual auditory nerve fibers (ANFs), the primary auditory afferents, in response to sounds impinging upon the ears.
Detailed Description
Anatomical Foundations
Acoustic information relayed from the inner ear to the central nervous system is encoded in the sequences of spikes produced by (type I) ANFs. In mammals, each ANF contacts a single receptor cell (inner hair cell, IHC). ANF spikes are initiated by neurotransmitter release from usually only a single active zone per afferent, the “ribbon,” in the IHC, a unique arrangement (Ashmore 2010; Rutherford et al. 2012). Each IHC is contacted by 5–30 ANFs, depending upon species and cochlear location, which thus share some, but not all, functional response properties.
Spontaneous Activity
ANFs produce spikes in the absence of external sound (spontaneous activity). The mean spontaneous rate varies between fibers, in mammals from near zero up to more than 100 spikes per second (Pickles
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References
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Heil, P. (2015). Auditory Nerve Response, Afferent Signals. In: Jaeger, D., Jung, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6675-8_424
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6675-8_424
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