Summary
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1.
70% of primary afferent fibres in the bobtail lizard were irregularly spontaneously active, with rates between 0.1 and 123.7 spikes/s (mean of 31.2 spikes/s). The rate distribution is bimodal. Mid-frequency fibres with lower thresholds tend to have higher spontaneous rates.
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2.
About one third of all fibres show a more prominent mode in their inter-spike interval histogram than is to be expected from a quasi-Poisson distribution. Preferred intervals in the spontaneous discharge patterns were not normally seen; this is presumably due to the lack of exclusive innervation of hair cells.
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3.
Primary fibres mostly responded to sound with a discharge rate increase. The form of the peri-stimulustime histogram varies between fibres; three different response types are described. Fibres of low characteristic frequency (CF up to 0.65 kHz) show a characteristic change in their response pattern with stimulation frequency; it is suggested that primary suppression plays an important role in shaping the very phasic response to tones at the fibres' upper frequency range. The responses of higher-CF fibres (CF 0.55–4 kHz) are independent of stimulation frequency. About one third of them shows a primary-like discharge pattern. The majority, however, responds with a chopper-like discharge pattern and there is evidence that this discharge, as in mammalian cochlear-nucleus stellate cells, originates from temporal summation.
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4.
The systematically-varying response pattern typical for low-CF fibres introduces special difficulties in defining the extent of the excitatory tuning curve and of the two-tone rate suppression area. The influence of threshold criteria on the overlap seen between both curves is discussed.
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Abbreviations
- CF :
-
characteristic frequency
- PSTH :
-
peri-stimulus time histogram
- TIH :
-
time-interval histogram
- TTRS :
-
two-tone rate suppression
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Köppl, C., Manley, G.A. Peripheral auditory processing in the bobtail lizard Tiliqua rugosa . J Comp Physiol A 167, 113–127 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00192411
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00192411