SEMI-STATE MODELS FOR VLSI HAIR-CELL CIRCUITS

Cochlea hair-cells act as neural interfaces of sound signals and, ther efore, circuit representations are important to signal processing syst ems based upon characteristics of the ear. Here nonlinear semi-state e quations for a bidirectional circuit representing a generic cochlea ha ir-cell are presented. The circuit can be specialized to inner or oute r hair-cells depending upon the choice of circuit parameter values. Al so developed are a canonical semi-state description for the hair-cell potassium and sodium channels, and circuits suitable for a transistori zed hardware implementation. Circuit simulations are run with numerica l data to correlate with the Howard-Hudspeth experiments.