Including two-dimensional pressure-focusing in transmission-line cochlear models

Transmission-line models are the simplest physics-based cochlear models that include an explicit representation of the traveling wave, which plays an important role for encoding complex sounds in the auditory periphery. Despite their many attractive features, transmission-line models suffer from well-known shortcomings that prevent them from replicating the experimental data or explicating the physical functioning of the cochlea. The main issue is that they neglect important two-dimensional (2D) hydrodynamic effects, widely known as “pressure focusing,” which enhance the vibration of the cochlear sensory tissue in a wavelength-dependent fashion. Here, we present an efficient method for including 2D pressure-focusing in transmission-line models.