Peripheral analysis of frequency in human ears revealed by tone burst evoked otoacoustic emissions

Otoacoustic emissions were evoked in the same ears with single tone bursts at 1, 2 and 3 kHz and with a complex stimulus consisting of a digital addition of the three tone bursts. Stimuli were presented at 75, 59 and 37 dB SPL to 28 ears of human subjects with normal hearing. The purpose was to determine if comparisons of responses to the complex stimulus with a posthoc addition of responses from single tone bursts could delineate features of cochlear frequency analysis of short-duration signals. For processing of the data, the results from the individual tone bursts were combined offline to form a composite response. This was then compared with the response obtained with the complex stimulus. Results revealed close correspondence between the spectra of the complex and composite responses in all ears despite interindividual differences in response morphology. Correlations between the complex and composite waveforms exceeded 80% for all stimulus levels. Subtractions of the two spectra revealed that the majority of the differences occurred at frequencies on the high-frequency slopes of the 1- and 2-kHz spectral peaks. This was due to a reduction in energy for the responses obtained with the complex stimulus. There was little variation between the two response types in the peak frequencies of their spectra, in the energy at frequencies on the lower frequency sides of the spectral peaks at 1 and 2 kHz, or in the spectral components at 3 kHz. Results reveal characteristics of the analysis of frequency in the preneural stages of cochlear processing.