A phenomenological model of the synapse between the inner hair cell and auditory nerve: Implications of limited neurotransmitter release sites

Peterson and Heil [Hear. Res., In Press] have argued that the statistics of spontaneous spiking in auditory nerve fibers (ANFs) can be best explained by a model with a limited number of synaptic vesicle docking (release) sites (∼4) and a relatively-long average redocking time (∼16-17 ms) for each of the sites. In this paper we demonstrate how their model can be: i) generalized to also describe sound-driven ANF responses and ii) incorporated …