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Received December 26, 2004
Revised February 1, 2005
Accepted after revision April 15, 2005
1 Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: pfuchs{at}bme.jhu.edu.
The activity of individual afferent neurons in the mammalian cochlea can be driven by neurotransmitter released from a single synaptic ribbon in a single inner hair cell. Thus, a ribbon synapse must be able to transmit all the information on sound frequency, intensity and timing carried centrally. This task is made still more demanding by the process of binaural sound localization that utilizes separate computations of time and intensity, with temporal resolution as fine as 10 microseconds in central nuclei. These computations may rely in part on the fact that response phase (at the characteristic frequency) of individual afferent neurons is invariant with intensity. Somehow, the ribbon synapse can provide stronger synaptic drive to signal varying intensity, without accompanying changes in transmission time that ordinarily occur during chemical neurotransmission. Recent ultrastructural and functional studies suggest features of the ribbon that may underlie these capabilities.
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