Spontaneous otoacoustic emissions in an active nonlinear cochlear model in the time domain

Abstract

A large fraction of human cochleas emits sounds even in the absence of external stimulation. These so-called spontaneous otoacoustic emissions (SOAEs) are a hallmark of the active nonlinear amplification process taking place in the cochlea. Here, we extend a previously proposed frequency domain model and put forward an active nonlinear one-dimensional model of the cochlea in the time domain describing human SOAEs [5]. In our model, oscillatory elements are close to an instability (Hopf bifurcation), they are subject to dynamical noise and coupled by hydrodynamic, elastic and dissipative interactions. Furthermore, oscillators are subject to a weak spatial irregularity in their activity (normally distributed and exponentially correlated in space) that gives rise to the individuality of each simulated cochlea. Our model captures main statistical features of the distribution of emission frequencies, the distribution of the numbers of emissions per cochlea, and the distribution of the distances between neighboring emissions as were previously measured in experiment [14].