Auditory nerve model for predicting performance limits of normal and impaired listeners

Abstract

A computational auditory nerve (AN) model was developed for use in modeling psychophysical experiments with normal and impaired human listeners. In this phenomenological model, many physiologically vulnerable response properties associated with the cochlear amplifier are represented by a single nonlinear control mechanism, including the effects of level-dependent tuning, compression, level-dependent phase, suppression, and fast nonlinear dynamics on the responses of high, medium, and low spontaneous-rate (SR) AN fibers. Several model versions are described that can be used to evaluate the relative effects of these nonlinear properties.