Model of Neural Inhibition in the Mammalian Cochlea

Abstract

The characteristics of a variety of possible inhibitory-connection schemes among elements lying within the cochlear were considered. All of these schemes suggest a sharpening of the frequency sensitivity of any single neuron. One, based on the principle of shunting generator currents away from the site of neural excitation, and consisting of linear operations except for shunting, yields a nonlinear generator function similar to one that has been used to fit the input-output data of single primary units of the cat to click stimuli. Apart from its possible application in the cochlear, shunting inhibition leads to theoretically interesting operations in sensory-information processing.