Yes even there is a mixture of sound, these are coded differently. The evidence of this comes from Individuals with noise induced hearing loss.Where they have the neuonal damage occuring for the low spontaneous rate fibers first.

Nike, you mean low and high int sounds of same frequency or different frequencies?

Sorry for the delay in reply Sir and ma'am. Thank you for responding..

I do realize that my question was poorly formed. I am still not too clear about what I am asking , but I have a strong feeling that what i am asking is not too wrong. And am not even sure if I have a clear question, rather it turns out to be a thought. But, would be great if I can get comments or inputs

The Low SR fibres being affected in NIHL was the primary motivation of this line of thinking.

Vanaja mam, asked a very important question. This was one major concern which I was thinking of as well. Rather I was thinking on two lines.

1) when a modulated puretone reaches a receptor, then the the sound varies in intensity from high to low and keeps alternating. Now is the high intensity portion preferentially coded by the low SR fibres and the low intensity portion by the high SR fibres?  In this case, shouldn't modulation detection with affected low SR fibres perception and coding of shallow modulations should be affected than deep modulation. Also by extension modulations at high SLs should be more affected than modulation at low SLs

2) When two very close frequencies (within an auditory filter) are presented one at low and one at high intensity. Then the low intensity signal will fall within the excitation pattern of the high intensity. How are the different SR fibres coding the signal now. We also have to consider the weird phase relationships that may be present between the two signals.

Please do comment about these. I don't have a very specific question here though, but await a good discussion.

best

Nike