Mammalian cochlea as a physics guided evolution-optimized hearing sensor

Abstract

Nonlinear physics plays an essential role in hearing, from sound signal generation to sound sensing to the processing of complex sound environments. We demonstrate that the evolution of the biological hearing sensors demonstrates a dramatic reduction in the solution space available for hearing sensors due to nonlinear physics principles. More specifically, our analysis hints at that the differences between amniotic lineages hearing, could be recast into a scaleable and a non-scaleable arrangement of nonlinear sound detectors. The scalable solution employed in mammals, as the most advanced design, provides a natural context that demands the ultimate characterization of complex sounds through pitch.