Using depressing synapses for phase locked auditory onset detection

Abstract

Auditory onsets are robust features of sounds: because the direct path from sound source to ear is the shortest path, the onset is unaffected by reverberation. Many cells in the cochlear nucleus (in the auditory brainstem) are very sensitive to onsets. We propose a neurobiologically inspired spiking onset detector which spikes in phase with the incoming signal, and which can, as a result, be used to measure relatively small inter-aural time differences, permitting sound source direction estimation.