Essential Nonlinearities in Hearing

Essential nonlinearities in hearing.

Our hearing organ, the cochlea, evidently poises itself at a Hopf bifurcation to maximize tuning and amplification. We show that in this condition several effects are expected to be generic: compression of the dynamic range, infinitely sharp tuning at zero input, and generation of combination tones. These effects are "essentially" nonlinear in that they become more marked the smaller the forcin...

Essential Role of Couplings between Hearing Nonlinearities.

Hopf-type nonlinearities have been recently found to be the basic mechanism of the mammalian cochlear response. Physiology requires that these nonlinearities be coupled. By suitably implementing a biomorphic coupling scheme of cochlear nonlinearities, we obtain a simple cochlea model that faithfully reproduces measured basilar membrane response, validating the utility of the Hopf amplifier conc...

Autophagy is essential for hearing in mice

Hearing loss is the most frequent sensory disorder in humans. Auditory hair cells (HCs) are postmitotic at late-embryonic differentiation and postnatal stages, and their damage is the major cause of hearing loss. There is no measurable HC regeneration in the mammalian cochlea, and the maintenance of cell function is crucial for preservation of hearing. Here we generated mice deficient in autoph...

ACOUSTICS2008/2029 Role of peripheral nonlinearities in across-frequency processing of envelope fluctuations in normal hearing and hearing impaired listeners

ATP8B1 is essential for maintaining normal hearing.

ATP8B1 deficiency is caused by autosomal recessive mutations in ATP8B1, which encodes the putative phospatidylserine flippase ATP8B1 (formerly called FIC1). ATP8B1 deficiency is primarily characterized by cholestasis, but extrahepatic symptoms are also found. Because patients sometimes report reduced hearing capability, we investigated the role of ATP8B1 in auditory function. Here we show that ...