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 - 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
SN - 2041-1723
VL - 9
JO - Nature communications
JF - Nature communications
IS - 1
M1 - 4175
ER -