A mechanoelectrical mechanism for detection of sound envelopes in the hearing organ

Alfred L. Nuttall; Anthony J. Ricci; George Burwood; James M. Harte; Stefan Stenfelt; Per Cayé-Thomasen; Tianying Ren; Sripriya Ramamoorthy; Yuan Zhang; Teresa Wilson; Thomas Lunner; Brian C.J. Moore; Anders Fridberger

doi:10.1038/s41467-018-06725-w

A mechanoelectrical mechanism for detection of sound envelopes in the hearing organ

Alfred L. Nuttall, Anthony J. Ricci, George Burwood, James M. Harte, Stefan Stenfelt, Per Cayé-Thomasen, Tianying Ren, Sripriya Ramamoorthy, Yuan Zhang, Teresa Wilson, Thomas Lunner, Brian C.J. Moore, Anders Fridberger

Otolaryngology

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article

4 Scopus citations

Abstract

To understand speech, the slowly varying outline, or envelope, of the acoustic stimulus is used to distinguish words. A small amount of information about the envelope is sufficient for speech recognition, but the mechanism used by the auditory system to extract the envelope is not known. Several different theories have been proposed, including envelope detection by auditory nerve dendrites as well as various mechanisms involving the sensory hair cells. We used recordings from human and animal inner ears to show that the dominant mechanism for envelope detection is distortion introduced by mechanoelectrical transduction channels. This electrical distortion, which is not apparent in the sound-evoked vibrations of the basilar membrane, tracks the envelope, excites the auditory nerve, and transmits information about the shape of the envelope to the brain.

Original language	English (US)
Article number	4175
Journal	Nature communications
Volume	9
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-06725-w
State	Published - Dec 1 2018

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ASJC Scopus subject areas

Chemistry(all)
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology(all)
Physics and Astronomy(all)

Cite this

Nuttall, A. L., Ricci, A. J., Burwood, G., Harte, J. M., Stenfelt, S., Cayé-Thomasen, P., Ren, T., Ramamoorthy, S., Zhang, Y., Wilson, T., Lunner, T., Moore, B. C. J., & Fridberger, A. (2018). A mechanoelectrical mechanism for detection of sound envelopes in the hearing organ. Nature communications, 9(1), [4175]. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-06725-w

A mechanoelectrical mechanism for detection of sound envelopes in the hearing organ. / Nuttall, Alfred L.; Ricci, Anthony J.; Burwood, George; Harte, James M.; Stenfelt, Stefan; Cayé-Thomasen, Per; Ren, Tianying; Ramamoorthy, Sripriya; Zhang, Yuan; Wilson, Teresa; Lunner, Thomas; Moore, Brian C.J.; Fridberger, Anders.

In: Nature communications, Vol. 9, No. 1, 4175, 01.12.2018.

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article

Nuttall, Alfred L. ; Ricci, Anthony J. ; Burwood, George ; Harte, James M. ; Stenfelt, Stefan ; Cayé-Thomasen, Per ; Ren, Tianying ; Ramamoorthy, Sripriya ; Zhang, Yuan ; Wilson, Teresa ; Lunner, Thomas ; Moore, Brian C.J. ; Fridberger, Anders. / A mechanoelectrical mechanism for detection of sound envelopes in the hearing organ. In: Nature communications. 2018 ; Vol. 9, No. 1.

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Access to Document

10.1038/s41467-018-06725-w