TY - JOUR
T1 - A mechanoelectrical mechanism for detection of sound envelopes in the hearing organ
AU - Nuttall, Alfred L.
AU - Ricci, Anthony J.
AU - Burwood, George
AU - Harte, James M.
AU - Stenfelt, Stefan
AU - Cayé-Thomasen, Per
AU - Ren, Tianying
AU - Ramamoorthy, Sripriya
AU - Zhang, Yuan
AU - Wilson, Teresa
AU - Lunner, Thomas
AU - Moore, Brian C.J.
AU - Fridberger, Anders
N1 - Funding Information:
This study was supported by the Swedish Research Council (K2014-63X-14061-14-5 and 2017-06092), Torsten Söderberg foundation, Strategic research area for systems neurobiology (Region Östergötland), Linköping University, and NIH-NIDCD (R01 DC-004554 to TR and R01 DC 000141 to A.L.N. and A.F.). Claus Elberling, Virum, Denmark, is acknowledged for helpful discussions, and Fredrik Elinder and Karl Grosh for comments on previous manuscript versions.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018, The Author(s).
PY - 2018/12/1
Y1 - 2018/12/1
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
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U2 - 10.1038/s41467-018-06725-w
DO - 10.1038/s41467-018-06725-w
M3 - Article
C2 - 30302006
AN - SCOPUS:85054568589
VL - 9
JO - Nature Communications
JF - Nature Communications
SN - 2041-1723
IS - 1
M1 - 4175
ER -