Great advances have been made in understanding hearing in recent years. In particular, the mechanical function of the cochlea has become the focus of intense interest. This started in one direction, with the discovery of otoacoustic emissions in 1978, which required active mechanical amplification processes, as first postulated by Gold in 1948. Direct evidence for the role of this mechanism in sharpening-up the otherwise poor, basilar membrane tuning properties, was provided in 1982; and in 1983, motility was shown in outer hair cells. In parallel, an immense amount of work has been done on the electrophysiology of hair cells, following the first intracellular recordings in 1977. Over a longer time scale, models of basilar membrane motion have been developed and refined, and recently much effort has been put into incorporating active mechanisms and non-linear processes. It seemed an opportune time to bring together the leading workers in these various areas, to take stock of the whole field and to stimulate further progress. This book represents the proceedings of a NATO ARW on the Mechanics of Hearing held at the University of Keele, 3-8 July, 1988. The conception of the meeting owes much to earlier meetings held in Boston in 1985 (Peripheral Auditory Mechallisms, Eds. J.B. Allen, J.L.

The workshop brought together experts in genetics, molecular and cellular biology, physiology, engineering, physics, mathematics, audiology and medicine to present current work and to review the critical issues of inner ear function. A special emphasis of the workshop was on analytical model based studies. Experimentalists and theoreticians thus shared their points of view. The topics ranged from consideration of the hearing organ as a system to the study and modeling of individual auditory cells including molecular aspects of function. Some of the topics in the book are: motor proteins in hair cells; mechanical and electrical aspects of transduction by motor proteins; function of proteins in stereocilia of hair cells; production of acoustic force by stereocilia, mechanical properties of hair cells and the organ of Corti; mechanical vibration of the organ of Corti; wave propagation in tissue and fluids of the inner ear; sound amplification in the cochlea; critical oscillations; cochlear nonlinearity, and mechanisms for the production of otoacoustic emissions. This book will be invaluable to researchers and students in auditory science.

Knowledge about the structure and function of the inner ear is vital to an understanding of vertebrate hearing. This volume presents a detailed overview of the mammalian cochlea from its anatomy and physiology to its biophysics and biochemistry. The nine review chapters, written by internationally distinguished auditory researchers, provide a detailed and unified introduction to sound processing in the cochlea and the steps by which the ensuing signals are prepared for the central nervous system.

Proceedings of a workshop on the physics and biophysics of hearing that brought together experimenters and modelers working on all aspects of audition. Topics covered include: cochlear mechanical measurements, cochlear models, mechanicals and biophysics of hair cells, efferent control, and ultrastructure.

Auditory Physiology and Perception documents the proceedings of the 9th International Symposium on Hearing held in Careens, France, 9-14 June 1991. The aim of the symposium was to promote exchanges between hearing scientists working with different approaches from cell biology to psychology. The volume is organized into 10 parts. Part I contains papers on the biology of inner ear cells. Part II presents studies on auditory periphery functioning. Part III examines frequency selectivity while Part IV contains papers that deal with the subject of pitch. The papers in Part V examine the coding of intensity. Parts VI and VII discuss temporal analyses and spectral shape analysis, respectively. Part VIII takes up spectro-temporal processing. Part IX covers binaural interactions and sound localization. The studies in Part X focus on pathologies, such as the relations between evoked otoacoustic emissions and pure tone audiometry and the effect of short duration acoustic trauma on activity of single neurons in the ventral cochlear nucleus. The final chapter of the text is a tribute to Professor Zwicker, a leading scientist in hearing, who passed away some months before the symposium.