Round-window recorded potential of single-fibre discharge (unit response) in normal and noise-damaged cochleas

Unit responses (URs) of eight-nnerve fibres have been determined at the round window by spike-triggered averaging in both normal and pathological guinea pig cochleas. The pathology was mainly noise-induced damage. The URs have been analysed with respect to their dependence on the fibre's threshold, characteristic frequency (CF) and spontaneous rate (SR). The results from normal cochleas confirmed earlier data (Prijs, 1986): the UR has a diphasic waveform and the amplitude of its negative first peak is about 0.1 μV. From the six parameters (amplitude, latency, and width of the two peaks) by which the UR was described only the amplitude of the positive peak showed a significant variation with CF: a small decrease with increasing CF (CF-range 0.1 to 20 kHz). This finding may possibly be caused by oscillations in the spike-triggered average for low CFs. URs for most low- and medium-SR fibreswere found to be large (greater than 0.3 μV). However, this result is interpreted as an artefact caused by synchrony of fibre spontaneous activity. In damaged cochleas only slight changes of the UR were found: the waveform duration became significantly shorter and on some occasions the positive peak increased in amplitude, but latency and amplitude of the negative component of the UR remained unchanged.