RECENT RESEARCH ON HEARING

With the cathode ray oscillograph, Wever and Bray¹ studied electrical changes in the auditory nerve of an anesthetized animal in response to sound. They discovered a phenomenon previously unknown, "the electrical response of the cochlea." The term connotes a change of electrical potential in the cochlea which occurs 0.1 millisecond after sound is incident on the eardrum. According to Kerridge,² the change varies in direction as often as does the pressure of air on the drum. As electrical changes are converted into sound waves in every radio set, a similar method was applied to the electrical response of the cochlea. Thus sounds of the voice or of music in the same room as the ear of an anesthetized cat can be relayed to another room, where phonograph records of the reproduced sounds can be made. Although an entirely different phenomenon, the action potentials of the auditory nerve may