The auditory system’s ~120 dB dynamic range exceeds any single nerve fiber’s coding capacity

Evidence

One of the issues here is the very large dynamic range of hearing, which encompasses sound levels ranging from those near threshold (e.g., 0–10 dB SPL) to the level at which damage or uncomfortably loud sounds are experienced (e.g., 100–120 dB SPL). A single locus on the basilar membrane is able to code this large range, as we observed in Figure 4–1. The auditory nerve also codes for stimulus intensity: Figure 4–2 illustrates that increasing stimulus level increases the firing rate of auditory neurons. However, each individual fiber cannot, by itself, provide sufficient information to code the entire dynamic range of the auditory system. — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 732

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to why hearing loss compresses dynamic range and why hearing aids need wide-dynamic-range compression. — connects to: A single auditory nerve fibre’s firing is unpredictable and noisy — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 1639