Psychology 2015A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Neural Coding, Monaural, Interaural Time Difference

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2015A/B
• Professor: John Campbell

Document Summary

Bekesy discovers how the basilar membrane vibrates: observed the vibration of the basilar membrane by boring a hole in cochlea"s taken from animal and human cadavers. Found that the vibrating motion of the basilar membrane was like a traveling wave. Tonotopic map: cochlea shows an orderly map of frequencies along its length, apex responds best to low frequencies, base responds best to high frequencies, neural frequency tuning curves. Each hair cell and auditory nerve fibre responds to a narrow range of frequencies: plotting thresholds for frequencies results in tuning curves, pure tones are used to determine the threshold for specific frequencies measured at single neurons. Frequency to which the neuron is most sensitive is the characteristic frequency. Cochlear implants: used to correct hearing in people with deafness cause by damage to the hair cells n the cochlea. Electrodes are inserted into the cochlea to electrically stimulate auditory nerve fibers, which sends signals to the brain.