Basilar membrane tuning is sharper in living than dead cochleae

Evidence

Numerous studies have followed that of Sellick et al. and have confirmed their results that frequency selectivity is much better than initially reported by von Békésy, due to the damage to the cochlea caused by death in his experiments. Other physiological experiments have also reported tuning curves across a wide range of best frequencies for healthy mammalian species. Universally, those studies showed that the bandwidth (in hertz) of the tuning curves increases with increasing center frequency (Palmer, 1987). — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 435

Categorization

• XREF: Explains why earlier (von Békésy) estimates of poor tuning were wrong — ties to historical methodology across hearing literature.