Auditory processing in a post-cochlear neural network vowel spectrum processing based on spike synchrony

The present work is concerned with the processing of spectral inforrnation by stochastic coding, at the output of the cochlea. We study the collective behaviour of a !arge number of cells based on a measure of the correlation of sequences of spikes between neighbour units. Our first results show that we can obtain significant discrimination of spectra1 components of vowels without any kind of cabled lateral inhibition or second filter device. This collective behaviour is made possible by the synchronization of inputs of adjacent units. This could provide an interesting and rather new way of making profit of both geo&I'ap.hical c~ing (tonotopy) and temporal coding (synchromzatwn) parttcularly useful for formant detection.