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APS » Journals » Phys. Rev. Lett. » Volume 84 » Issue 22
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 84, 5232–5235 (2000)

Essential Nonlinearities in Hearing

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V. M. Eguíluz1,2, M. Ospeck3,4, Y. Choe3, A. J. Hudspeth3,4, and M. O. Magnasco2
1Instituto Mediterráneo de Estudios Avanzados IMEDEA (CSIC-UIB), E-07071 Palma de Mallorca, Spain
2Laboratory of Mathematical Physics, The Rockefeller University, 1230 York Avenue, New York, New York 10021
3Laboratory of Sensory Neuroscience, The Rockefeller University, 1230 York Avenue, New York, New York 10021
4Howard Hughes Medical Institute, The Rockefeller University, 1230 York Avenue, New York, New York 10021

Received 23 September 1999; published in the issue dated 29 May 2000

Our hearing organ, the cochlea, evidently poises itself at a Hopf bifurcation to maximize tuning and amplification. We show that in this condition several effects are expected to be generic: compression of the dynamic range, infinitely sharp tuning at zero input, and generation of combination tones. These effects are “essentially” nonlinear in that they become more marked the smaller the forcing: there is no audible sound soft enough not to evoke them. All the well-documented nonlinear aspects of hearing therefore appear to be consequences of the same underlying mechanism.

© 2000 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.84.5232
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.84.5232
PACS:
87.19.Dd, 05.45.-a, 43.66.+y, 87.17.Nn
 
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