The simplest form of the theory says that the vibration causes a nerve to fire every 0.002 s, sending a signal to the brain that is interpreted as a 500 Hz sound. One difficulty ...The simplest form of the theory says that the vibration causes a nerve to fire every 0.002 s, sending a signal to the brain that is interpreted as a 500 Hz sound. One difficulty with this theory is that the nerves attached to the hair cells in the cochlea don't seem to fire as often as the theory would predict (and can't fire at a rate of 20,000 Hz, at the high end of human hearing).
