Response of cochlear nerve fibers to brief acoustic stimuli: Role of discharge-history effects

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Abstract
The probability that a cochlear nerve fiber spike discharge occurs during a time interval .DELTA.t depends on both the acoustic stimulus and on aftereffects from earlier spike discharges. The influence of discharge-history on poststimulus time (PST) histogram responses to acoustic click and tone-burst stimuli was examined. Discharge-history effects were found to include the modification of observed interpeak times of PST responses to clicks, a loss of distinct peaks in the click response to high characteristic frequency (CF > 5 kHz) fibers, and changes in the raito of initial to steady-state response portions of tone-burst responses. The method used to separate discharge-history from stimulus-related factors is based on a model developed in Gaumond et al. (1982). The results are in general agreement with those obtained by the method of Gray (1967), which discards from consideration those portions of the response record not preceded by a silent interval of 20 or 25 ms or more. This method requires more assumptions about the spike train, but produces less variable results by utilizing more of the spike train data.