Auditory nerve fibers skip cycles, uncoupling spike timing from firing rate

Evidence

In the AN, ISI histograms of responses to low-frequency pure tones are always multimodal (Kiang et al. 1965 ); i.e., after firing a spike, fibers often skip one or more cycles before firing another spike. Cycle skipping allows temporal and average rate behavior to be uncoupled. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 4494