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Updated: May 28, 2026

Auditory Brainstem Response and Outer Hair Cell Whole-cell Patch Clamp Recording in Postnatal Rats
Published on: May 24, 2018
Electrically evoked auditory nerve responses in the cochlea with normal outer hair cells
Tianying Ren1, Menghe Guo, Wenxuan He
1Oregon Hearing Research Center (NRC04), Department of Otolaryngology and Head & Neck Surgery, Oregon Health Science University, 3181 SW Sam Jackson Park Road, Portland, Oregon, 97239-3098.
None:
As hybrid cochlear implant devices are increasingly used for restoring hearing in patients with residual hearing it is important to understand electrically evoked responses in cochleae having functional hair cells. To test the hypothesis that extracochlear electrical stimulation (EES) from sinusoidal current can provoke an auditory nerve response with normal frequency selectivity, the EES-evoked compound action potential (ECAP) was investigated in this study. Brief sinusoidal electrical currents, delivered via a round window electrode, were used to evoke ECAP. The ECAP waveform was observed to be the same as the acoustically evoked CAP (ACAP), except for a shorter latency. The input/output and intensity/latency functions of ACAPs and ECAPs were also similar. The maximum acoustic masking for both ACAP and ECAP occurred near probe frequencies. Since the masked tuning curve of a CAP reflects the frequency selectivity of neural excitation, these data demonstrate a highly specific activation of the auditory nerve, which would result in high degree of frequency selectivity. This frequency selectivity likely results from the cochlear traveling wave caused by electrically stimulated outer hair cells.
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