Loudness coding requires pooled responses across many auditory nerve fibers

Evidence

Taken together the code for loudness must be more sophisticated than a simple increase in firing rate within a single fiber, and the responses to multiple fibers must be involved in the coding of the dynamic range of the auditory system. Low stimulus levels can only be coded by low-threshold fibers, and except for the very lowest stimulus levels, multiple fibers will fire in response to even a lowlevel stimulus. Higher stimulus levels will lead to the involvement of multiple fibers, including the high-threshold fibers. Psychophysical modeling also implicates the involvement of many fibers to code the full dynamic range of hearing (Viemester, 1988). — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 735

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies how the auditory code for loudness works across a population of fibers rather than within a single fiber.
• XREF: connects to: Clean auditory sensation emerges only from pooling many noisy nerve fibres — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 1639