ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2018
Mammalian behavior and physiology converge to confirm sharper cochlear tuning in humans.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 45 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
45 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 78 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pooled it
- The tympanic covering layer contributes to basilar membrane elasticity potentially influencing human frequency resolution and speech perception.Journal of anatomy · 2026Article
- M2EEG-VR: Validation of EEG Visualization and Sonification for the Detection of Neonatal Seizures on a Virtual Reality Platform.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- On the Sharpness of Auditory Filters: Considering Subclinical Deficits Reveals Sharper Otoacoustic Emission Estimates of Frequency Selectivity in Humans.Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology : JARO · 2025Article
- Cues for tone-in-noise detection: Evidence from constant-stimuli and adaptive approaches.The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2025Article
- Article
- How Exceptional Is the Ear?Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology : JARO · 2025Review
- Precise spike-timing information in the brainstem is well aligned with the needs of communication and the perception of environmental sounds.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Gradient boosted decision trees reveal nuances of auditory discrimination behavior.PLoS computational biology · 2024Article
- A maturational frequency discrimination deficit may explain developmental language disorder.Psychological review · 2024Article
- Estimation of Cochlear Frequency Selectivity Using a Convolution Model of Forward-Masked Compound Action Potentials.Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology : JARO · 2024Article
- Exploiting individual differences to assess the role of place and phase locking cues in auditory frequency discrimination at 2 kHz.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Sensitivity to Frequency Modulation is Limited Centrally.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2023Article
- Cochlear Amplification in the Short-Wave Region by Outer Hair Cells changing Organ-of-Corti area to Amplify the Fluid Traveling Wave.Hearing research · 2022Article
- Tonotopic Selectivity in Cats and Humans: Electrophysiology and Psychophysics.Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology : JARO · 2022Article
- Auditory filter shapes derived from forward and simultaneous masking at low frequencies: Implications for human cochlear tuning.Hearing research · 2022Article
- Compression and amplification algorithms in hearing aids impair the selectivity of neural responses to speech.Nature biomedical engineering · 2022Article
- In Vivo Basilar Membrane Time Delays in Humans.Brain sciences · 2022Article
- Human discrimination and modeling of high-frequency complex tones shed light on the neural codes for pitch.PLoS computational biology · 2022Article
- Questions and controversies surrounding the perception and neural coding of pitch.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 4 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Frequency analysis of sound by the cochlea is the most fundamental property of the auditory system. Despite its importance, the resolution of this frequency analysis in humans remains controversial. The controversy persists because the methods used to estimate tuning in humans are indirect and have not all been independently validated in other species. Some data suggest that human cochlear tuning is considerably sharper than that of laboratory animals, while others suggest little or no difference between species. We show here in a single species (ferret) that behavioral estimates of tuning bandwidths obtained using perceptual masking methods, and objective estimates obtained using otoacoustic emissions, both also employed in humans, agree closely with direct physiological measurements from single auditory-nerve fibers. Combined with human behavioral data, this outcome indicates that the frequency analysis performed by the human cochlea is of significantly higher resolution than found in common laboratory animals. This finding raises important questions about the evolutionary origins of human cochlear tuning, its role in the emergence of speech communication, and the mechanisms underlying our ability to separate and process natural sounds in complex acoustic environments.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.