[Estimates of velocity of the travelling wave in the high-range cochlea of the dolphin].

: Auditory brainstem responses (ABR) to sound pulses of precisely defined spectrum band of 0.5 oct (from 11.2-16 to 90-128 kHz) were recorded in bottlenose dolphins Tursiops truncatus. At equal stimulus levels, ABR amplitude depended on the stimulus spectrum band: the higher the frequency, the higher the amplitude. ABR waveform little depended on the stimulus spectrum band, however ABR latency did depend: the higher the frequency, the shorter the latency. The latency difference between responses to the lowest-frequency (11.2-16 kHz) and the highest-frequency (90-129 kHz) stimuli was up to 0.3 ms. This latency difference was attributed to the time of the wave travelling along the basilar membrane. Therefore, the data were used to compute the travelling-wave velocity. The obtained estimates were: 38.2 oct/ms at the proximal (high-frequ- ency) end of the basilar membrane to 2.8 oct/ms at the distal (low-frequency) end. Comparison of the travelling-wave velocities in humans and dolphins shows that the travelling-wave velocity is linked to the characteristic frequency, not to the place in the cochlea.