volley theory of hearing

n. The idea that no individual nerve in the auditory nerve tract responds to every sound stimulus but that some group of cells responds to each stimulus so that in a succession of sound waves some respond to the first wave, some to the second, some to the third, up to some nth repetition of the wave. This creates waves of response that match the waves of sound, allowing the perception of sounds whose time period is too fast for an individual cell to respond to each wave. Nerve cells can respond at most between 500 and 100 times per second, and yet we can hear sounds at up to about 20,000 cycles per second because of the partial response pattern of auditory nerve cells.