The temperature dependency of cochlear adaptation and masking in the guinea pig

The problem of the location of the adaptation mechanism in the peripheral hearing organ is studied using the temperature dependency of adaptation and masking of round window recorded AP in the guinea pigAt first, the influence of temperature on the synchronization conditions in the auditory nerve is investigated by observing the behaviour of the width-latency relation for the N1. It is shown that cooling does not act in the same way as attenuating the stimulus but that the desynchronization caused is comparable to that by lowering the interstimulus interval (ISI). The competitive desynchronizing action of cooling on one side and adaptation and masking on the other side is discussedSecondly, the temperature dependency of the An1-ISI and An1-S/N relations is studied. It became clear that, while the recovery time is not influenced by temperature, the decay time of the An1 to its final value during a series of tone bursts is increased by lowering the temperatureThe temperature dependency of synaptic mechanism...