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Reverse Correlation Analysis of Auditory-Nerve Fiber Responses to Broadband Noise in a Bird, the Barn Owl

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Abstract

While the barn owl has been extensively used as a model for sound localization and temporal coding, less is known about the mechanisms at its sensory organ, the basilar papilla (homologous to the mammalian cochlea). In this paper, we characterize, for the first time in the avian system, the auditory nerve fiber responses to broadband noise using reverse correlation. We use the derived impulse responses to study the processing of sounds in the cochlea of the barn owl. We characterize the frequency tuning, phase, instantaneous frequency, and relationship to input level of impulse responses. We show that, even features as complex as the phase dependence on input level, can still be consistent with simple linear filtering. Where possible, we compare our results with mammalian data. We identify salient differences between the barn owl and mammals, e.g., a much smaller frequency glide slope and a bimodal impulse response for the barn owl, and discuss what they might indicate about cochlear mechanics. While important for research on the avian auditory system, the results from this paper also allow us to examine hypotheses put forward for the mammalian cochlea.

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Acknowledgments

Work supported by a European Community Marie Curie fellowship (PIOF-GA-2011-300753) for B.F., by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (SFB/TRR31 “Active Hearing”) to CK, by the National Institute of Health (DC007690) to JLP. The authors would like to thanks B. Fischer for helping with the statistics.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dominick P. Department of Neuroscience, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY, 10461, USA

    Bertrand Fontaine & Jose L Peña

  2. Laboratory of Auditory Neurophysiology, University of Leuven, 3000, Leuven, Belgium

    Bertrand Fontaine

  3. Cluster of Excellence “Hearing4all” and Research Center Neurosensory Science and Department of Neuroscience, School of Medicine and Health Science, Carl von Ossietzky University, 2612, Oldenburg, Germany

    Christine Köppl

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  1. Bertrand Fontaine
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Correspondence to Bertrand Fontaine.

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Fontaine, B., Köppl, C. & Peña, J.L. Reverse Correlation Analysis of Auditory-Nerve Fiber Responses to Broadband Noise in a Bird, the Barn Owl. JARO 16, 101–119 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10162-014-0494-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10162-014-0494-4

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