Response of neurons of the dorsal and posteroventral cochlear nuclei of the cat to acoustic stimuli of long duration.

Abstract

The response of neurons of the dorsal and posteroventral cochlear nuclei to long duration stimuli, including tones, noise bands and noise-tone combinations, was investigated. In some units, the relation between discharge rate and the intensity of tones was monotonic; in others, the relation was non-monotonic. The interspike-interval statistics characterizing the response to tones were described. There were systematic differences in the shapes of the interval histograms derived from a given neuron as the firing rate changed and also in the shapes of the histograms derived from different neurons compared at the same discharge rate. Many neurons exhibited negative correlation between neighboring intervals. The discharge rate in response to noise bands was a function of both intensity and bandwidth. The discharge patterns in response to narrow bands of noise were more irregular than were those in response to tones. When noisetone combinations were used, both the discharge rate and the patterns of discharge were dependent upon the relative intensities of the tone and the noise.