The sense of hearing is the fastest of our senses and provides the first all-or-none action potential in the auditory nerve in less than four milliseconds. Short stimulus evoked latencies and their minimal variability are hallmarks of auditory processing from spiral ganglia to cortex. Here, we review how even small changes in first spike latencies (FSL) and their variability (jitter) impact auditory temporal processing. We discuss a number of mouse models with degraded FSL/jitter whose mutations occur exclusively in the central auditory system and therefore might serve as candidates to investigate the cellular mechanisms underlying auditory processing disorders (APD).
Keywords: Auditory brainstem responses; Auditory processing disorder; First spike latency; Jitter; Kv1.1; Quivering; βIV-spectrin.
Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.