Text

Auditory nerve fibers typically show a large variety of spontaneous rates, ranging from 0 to up to 200 spikes/s. This spontaneous rate correlates with the fiber’s sound encoding features, such as rate threshold, first-spike latency, and phase locking. It is believed that this underlies the large dynamic range of the auditory nerve for encoding rich acoustic environments. In this study, spikes of auditory nerve fibers were recorded from young-adult and old Mongolian gerbils. In the gerbil, known for its good low-frequency hearing, the distribution of spontaneous rate, and thus also of the response features, differs between low- and high-frequency regions of the cochlea. Here, I will show how ageing affects the auditory nerve fiber functional heterogeneity along the gerbil cochlea and which age-related degenerative processes in the cochlea can explain these results.