Rd. Frisina et al., PRESERVATION OF AMPLITUDE-MODULATION CODING IN THE PRESENCE OF BACKGROUND-NOISE BY CHINCHILLA AUDITORY-NERVE FIBERS, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 99(1), 1996, pp. 475-490
Sound envelope temporal fluctuations are important for effective proce
ssing of biologically relevant acoustic information including speech,
animal vocalizations, sound-source location, and pitch. Amplitude modu
lation (AM) of sound envelopes can be encoded in quiet with high fidel
ity by many auditory neurons including those of the auditory nerve (AN
) and cochlear nucleus. From both neurophysiological and clinical pers
pectives, it is critical to understand the effects of background maski
ng noise on the processing of AM. To further this goal, single-unit re
cordings were made from AN fibers in anesthetized chinchillas. Units w
ere classified according to spontaneous firing rate (SR) and threshold
. Best frequency (BF) pure-tone bursts and AM (10-500 Hz) tone bursts
were employed as stimuli at several sound levels, both in quiet and in
the presence of a continuous wideband noise. It was found that (1) in
quiet, low SR AN fibers show the strongest AM coding, followed in ord
er by medium SR and high SR fibers, respectively. (2) AN units of all
three classes generally preserve their AM coding even in the presence
of loud (O or +6 dB S/N) background noise and at high sound levels (ov
er 75 dB SPL). (3) This preservation is usually achieved by lowering t
he average firing rate proportionately to decreases in the synchronous
(fundamental frequency) response. (4) For a few AN fibers, the AM cod
ing increases or is reduced in the presence of the background noise. T
hese findings suggest that AN preservation of AM coding in the presenc
e of a continuous masking noise results from shifts in the operating r
anges and firing rates of AN fibers resulting from cochlear nonlineari
ties and adaptive mechanisms. (C) 1996 Acoustical Society of America.