A critique of the critical cochlea: Hopf--a bifurcation--is better than none

The sense of hearing achieves its striking sensitivity, frequency selectivity, and dynamic range through an active process mediated by the inner ear's mechanoreceptive hair cells. Although the active process renders hearing highly nonlinear and produces a wealth of complex behaviors, these various characteristics may be understood as consequences of a simple phenomenon: the Hopf bifurcation. Any critical oscillator operating near this dynamic instability manifests the properties demonstrated for hearing: amplification with a specific form of compressive nonlinearity and frequency tuning whose sharpness depends on the degree of amplification. Critical oscillation also explains spontaneous otoacoustic emissions as well as the spectrum and level dependence of the ear's distortion products. Although this has not been realized, several valuable theories of cochlear function have achieved their success by incorporating critical oscillators.