Notched noise reveals differential improvement in the neural representation of the sound envelope

Precise temporal coding in auditory nerve fibers is crucial for sound localization and listening in noise. However, at higher sound levels, typical of everyday listening situations, temporal coding to the stimulus envelope is poor in fibers of the on-frequency channel, i.e., those tuned to the carrier stimulus. We predict that changes in cochlear gain improve temporal coding of the stimulus envelope differentially across frequency channels. Both auditory nerve fiber recordings (in Mongolian gerbils of either sex) and human psychophysics confirm that weak temporal coding at higher levels is improved when the target stimulus is presented in a spectrally flanking notched noise designed to reduce the cochlear gain. The proposed mechanism can help to explain the effect of cochlear gain loss, a known consequence of age- and noise-induced hearing loss, on everyday listening, such as problems with speech-in-noise perception and sound localization. Auditory nerve recordings, human psychophysics, and a computational model consistently indicate that stimulus-induced changes in cochlear gain improve temporal coding of the stimulus envelope at intermediate and high sound levels.

• Publication year

  2025

• Venue

  Communications Biology

• Publication date

  2025-08-07

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1038/s42003-025-08536-4PMID 40770410PMCID 12328572
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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• Notched noise reveals differential improvement in the neural representation of the sound envelope

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