Five decades of research on cochlear mechanics

The history of modern research on cochlear mechanics begins with Bekesy's experiments, the first of which were published only one year before the inception of ASA. The cochlear traveling waves and the frequency‐dependent maximum of basilar‐membrane vibration Bekesy discovered have been explained theoretically on the basis of the hydrodynamic theory of surface waves and confirmed experimentally, first indirectly, through recording of cochlear microphonics, later directly, with the help of the Mossbauer technique and capacitive probes. These measurements revealed the vibration maximum in the cochlea of a live mammal to be sharper than observed by Bekesy in post‐mortem preparations. However, the neural tuning found in cochlear nerve fibers appears to be still sharper, and the same is true for the receptor potentials of the inner hair cells. The mechanisms underlying the additional sharpening are currently under intensive investigation. They may be associated with cochlear nonlinearities, part of which appear...