Mechanical and neural interactions between binaurally applied sounds in cat cochlear nerve fibers

Most single fibers of the cochlear nerve (CN) in 22 cats exhibited effects of mechanical interaction in one cochlea between two sounds applied binaurally, similarly to results in two cats in which the contralateral CN was transected. In 11 of 189 fibers, the spontaneous and/or the sound-evoked activity was suppressed by a contralateral intense best-frequency sound; this indicates an interaural neural inhibition, probably through the olivocochlear bundle (OCB). The inhibited fiber population was small, and the intensity differences between the binaural sounds were exceptionally large, so that a simple negative feed-back function via the OCB is not likely.