Re: MCM: Q.1

["reinifrosch@xxxxxxxxxx" <reinifrosch@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello !

I would like to comment on a message posted
by Andrew Bell about 20 hours ago:

>---Ursprüngliche Nachricht----
>Von: andrew.bell@xxxxxxxxxx
>Datum: 15.03.2010 04:35
>An: <AUDITORY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Betreff: Re: MCM: Q.1
>
>Dear Reinhart:
>Let me be brief. [...]
>What I'm asking is to please just look at Fig. 7 of Lonsbury-Martin et al.
>1987 (JASA 81, 1507), with mind open, and WONDER. 
>Are you sure it's not resonance?
>Andrew.

The above-mentioned paper by Lonsbury-Martin et al. (1987) has the
title "Repeated TTS exposures in monkeys: Alterations in hearing,
cochlear structure, and single-unit thresholds", JASA 81, 1507-1518.

"TTS" means "temporary threshold shift". The mentioned exposures
were 100-dB pure tones, at many frequencies from 0.4 to 16 kHz.
Subjects were three rhesus monkeys. The Fig. 7 mentioned by Bell
(see above) exhibits three narrow zones with outer-hair cell lesions 
at 44.7%, 61%, and 62.5% distance from the apex. Figs. 8 and 9 show
similar OHC lesions, at different places, for the other two monkeys.

In their discussion section, Lonsbury-Martin et al. have written:
"[...] it appears that the low-frequency exposures may have contributed, 
in some manner, to the development of the high-frequency lesions 
observed in our subjects. [...]"

That 1987 paper by Lonbury-Martin et al. appears interesting to me.
It does not, however, contradict my travelling-wave ideas.

Reinhart.

Reinhart Frosch,
Dr. phil. nat.,
r. PSI and ETH Zurich,
Sommerhaldenstr. 5B,
CH-5200 Brugg.
Phone: 0041 56 441 77 72.
Mobile: 0041 79 754 30 32.
E-mail: reinifrosch@xxxxxxxxxx .