“…Puzzlingly, however, this argument overlooks the fact that the amplifier would also boost the signal. Indeed, according to transmission-line theory—a mathematical framework successfully used to represent cochlear wave propagation in 1, 2, and 3 dimensions [ 61 , 77 , 79 , 81 ]—spatially distributed (cascaded) wave amplification boosts the input signal, which is spatially coherent, more than the internal noise, which is not [ 82 , 83 ]. Passive transmission lines, in which the spatial gradient of wave power is negative, manifest the opposite behavior: input signals are attenuated more than the internal noise.…”