Electrical Stimulation of Eighth Cranial Nerve

Abstract

This is a report concerning the methods by which we have succeeded in stimulating the eighth nerve electrically. To carry out this study certain postulates were made for the purpose of selecting the initial experiment. We first assumed that many patients suffering from congenital and acquired hearing loss harbored a defective or inadequate organ of Corti rather than a functionless auditory nerve.¹ It would follow therefore that we should attempt to develop a method of stimulating the never electrically, in a manner similar to that previously done by Djourno et al.² An additional postulate was that the individual nerve fibers of the auditory branch of the eighth nerve are nonspecific. We further assumed that the number of nerve fibers firing simultaneously is a function of the instantaneous sound intensity, that the number of serial firings per second is a function of frequency, and that interpretation of this