Original Research

A Model of Frequency Coding in the Central Auditory Nervous System

Johan J. Hanekom
South African Journal of Communication Disorders | Vol 46, No 1 | a731 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.4102/sajcd.v46i1.731 | © 2020 Johan J. Hanekom | This work is licensed under CC Attribution 4.0
Submitted: 17 April 2020 | Published: 31 December 1999

About the author(s)

Johan J. Hanekom, Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Pretoria, South Africa

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Abstract

A phenomenological model for neural coding in the central auditory system is presented. This model is based on average rate-place codes and the hypothesis is that the rate-place code present in the population of low spontaneous rate nerve fibres is adequate to account for frequency discrimination thresholds across the entire audible frequency range. The activity of a population of nerve fibres in response to an input pure tone is calculated and a neural spike train pattern is generated. An optimal central observer estimates the input frequency from the spike train pattern. The model output is the frequency difference limen at the specific input frequency, determined from the estimated input frequency. It is shown that a rate-place code can account for psychoacoustically observed frequency difference limens. The model also supports the hypothesis that a human listener does not make full use of all the information relevant to frequency that is available in auditory nerve spike trains.

Keywords

rate-place codes; population coding; central auditory system; frequency discrimination; modelling

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