Abstract
Responses of individual fibers of the cat cochlear nerve to Japanese monosyllabic speech sounds were described. Responses were analyzed by making post-stimulus time histograms and “pitch-synchronous” period histograms. Almost all neurons responsive to speech sounds showed repetitive discharges synchronous with the pitch period irrespective of their characteristic frequencies (CF). The frequency relation between the tuning characteristics of single neurons and the spectral distribution of the stimulus was systematically investigated to find out stimulus parameters to produce the “pitch-synchronous” impulse discharges. It was found that the neurons responded to vowels if the latter contained formants with frequencies near the neurons' CFs.
