The more intense this vibration is, the more the hair cells are deflected and the more likely they are to cause cochlear nerve firings.
The volley theory, in which groups of neurons cooperate to code the temporal pattern, is an attempt to make the temporal theory more complete, but some frequencies are too high to see any synchrony in the cochlear nerve firings.
He noted that in two classic studies[2][3] individual hair cell neurons did not always fire at the first moment they were able to.
The gaps in the resulting train of neural impulses would then all be integer multiples of the period of vibration.
Research suggests that the perception of pitch depends on both the places and patterns of neuron firings.
The two stimulus parameters can, however, be controlled independently using cochlear implants: pulses with a range of rates can be applied via different pairs of electrodes distributed along the membrane and subjects can be asked to rate a stimulus on a pitch scale.