Entracking neurons form plateau ‘buttes’ of uniform firing rate across a tonotopic profile

Evidence

For a low-frequency pure tone at some supra-threshold level, the rate-place profile would show a horizontal rather than a vertical pattern: all entracking neurons would be firing at the same firing rate, which would equal the stimulus frequency. Of course, only neurons with CF sufficiently close to the stimulus frequency would receive enough drive from their inputs to show entracking. The expected output is therefore a mixture of the vertical and horizontal pattern: a butte of activity in which all neurons would have the same average firing rate, and whose edges are formed by neurons whose CF is too far removed from the stimulus frequency for full entracking. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 4494

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the chapter’s key ‘butte’ concept as a horizontal rate-place profile created by entracking.
• XREF: Counterpoint to rate-place/tonotopic coding described elsewhere in the reader’s pool on auditory nerve coding.