Masking of Electrical by Acoustic Stimuli: Behavioral Evidence for Tonotopic Organization

Abstract

When pure-tone acoustic masking stimuli of various frequencies were presented simultaneously with electrical stimuli applied to cochlear nucleus, only those maskers within a limited frequency range interfered with the detection of the electrical stimuli. The form of the masking functions obtained suggest that the electrical stimulus directly activated only a small population of neurons which were functioning in a tonotopic fashion.