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by yzhou
5222 days ago
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The hearing of ears is a time-domain thing, not a frequency domain thing. It's the frequency response of all the frequency components added together. people might not be able to respond well to a single high frequency tone, but might respond well to a combination of tones. |
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The basilar membrane is a loosely tuned resonator. The hair cells placed on it fire beginning on the positive zero crossing. So, to a first approximation, the ear is in fact a filterbank.
There is a time domain component in that the cochlear nucleus contains nerve cells that watch multiple hair cells at a time and correlate the firing in several different ways. Some attempt to discriminate pitch, some convolve and correlate in-phase firing energy, some look for tones to end, etc. This information is then forwarded on to the brain.
However, getting back to your point, no hair cells will fire if the basilar membrane doesn't move, and it's tuned to a frequency range.