Improved temporal coding of sinusoids in electric stimulation of the auditory nerve using desynchronizing pulse trains.

Rubinstein et al. [Hearing Res. 127, 108-118 (1999)] suggested that the representation of electric stimulus waveforms in the temporal discharge patterns of auditory-nerve fiber (ANF) might be improved by introducing an ongoing, high-rate, desynchronizing pulse train (DPT). To test this hypothesis, activity of ANFs was studied in acutely deafened, anesthetized cats in response to 10-min-long, 5-kpps electric pulse trains that were sinusoidally modulated for 400 ms every second. Two classes of responses to sinusoidal modulations of the DPT were observed. Fibers that only responded transiently to the unmodulated DPT showed hyper synchronization and narrow dynamic ranges to sinusoidal modulators, much as responses to electric sinusoids presented without a DPT. In contrast, fibers that exhibited sustained responses to the DPT were sensitive to modulation depths as low as 0.25% for a modulation frequency of 417 Hz. Over a 20-dB range of modulation depths, responses of these fibers resembled responses to tones in a healthy ear in both discharge rate and synchronization index. This range is much wider than the dynamic range typically found with electrical stimulation without a DPT, and comparable to the dynamic range for acoustic stimulation. These results suggest that a stimulation strategy that uses small signals superimposed upon a large DPT to encode sounds may evoke temporal discharge patterns in some ANFs that resemble responses to sound in a healthy ear.