Energy transfer amongst coupled oscillating modes in the nonlinear cochlea: the physical basis of the basilar membrane response to transients.

We solved the motion equation of the cochlear partition in the time domain using standard numerical methods. Here we report some results on transient responses which we deem relevant for understanding the role of nonlinearity in cochlear sound processing. In particular, we found that traveling wave propagation, combined with compressive nonlinearity of forward transduction, results in immediate energy transfer between cochlear partition oscillating modes during rapid changes of input frequency. The consequences of this may be relevant for signal processing applications.