Dynamic aspects of cochlear microphonic potentials

Abstract

Cochlear microphonic potentials were recorded from the Mongolian gerbil in response to low-frequency auditory stimuli. Provided that contamination of the potentials by the phase-locked neurophonic is avoided, these recordings can be interpreted "as if recorded from a single outer hair cell". It is found that the instantaneous I/O-curves resemble the well-known Boltzmann activation curve. The dynamic aspect of the I/O-curves does reveal hysteresis and a level-dependent gain that is not observed in static measures of these curves. We explore a model that simulates CM generation from hair cell populations, but find it inadequate to reproduce the data. Rather, there seem to be fast, adaptive mechanisms probably at the level of the transduction channels themselves. © 2011 American Institute of Physics.