Single-unit auditory nerve fibre responses of young-adult and aging gerbils

This dataset was collected to study the functional consequences of
age-related hearing loss for the auditory nerve, which carries acoustic
information from the periphery to the central auditory system. Using
high-impedance glass electrodes, raw voltage traces and spike times were
recorded from more than one thousand single fibres of the auditory nerve
of young-adult, middle-aged, and old Mongolian gerbils raised in a quiet
environment. The dataset contains not only responses to simple acoustic
stimuli to characterize the fibres, but also to more complex stimuli, such
as speech logatomes in background noise and Schroeder-phase stimuli. A
software toolbox is provided to search through the dataset, to plot
various analysed outcomes, and to give insight into the analyses. This
dataset may serve as a valuable resource to test further hypotheses about
age-related hearing loss. Additionally, it can aid in optimizing available
computational models of the auditory system, which can contribute to, or
eventually even fully replace, animal experiments.

该数据集的采集旨在研究年龄相关性听力损失对听觉神经（auditory nerve）的功能影响——听觉神经负责将声学信息从外周传递至中枢听觉系统。研究人员采用高阻抗玻璃电极，从饲养于安静环境中的青年、中年及老年蒙古沙鼠的听觉神经中，记录了超过一千根单纤维的原始电压轨迹和尖峰时间（spike times）。数据集不仅包含纤维对简单声学刺激的响应（用于表征纤维特性），还涵盖其对更复杂刺激的响应，例如背景噪声中的语音logatomes（logatomes）及Schroeder相位刺激。同时提供了一个软件工具箱，用于检索数据集、绘制各类分析结果图表，并深入理解分析过程。该数据集可作为验证年龄相关性听力损失相关假设的宝贵资源；此外，它还有助于优化现有的听觉系统计算模型，这些模型可能为动物实验提供支持，甚至最终完全替代动物实验。