The time course of the interaction between adaptation and the recovery from adaptation of the auditory nerve neurophonic (ANN) responses was examined. The interaction between the process of recovery and the adaptation process of long probe tones which follow a masker, the so called whole tone recovery, was determined for the ANN response for different silent intervals between masker offset and probe onset. The auditory nerve neurophonic (ANN) reflects the ensemble response of phase-locked firing in single auditory nerve fibers to sustained signals. Consequently, neural response properties such as adaptation and recovery from adaptation of these coherent, time-locked responses can be studied. Recovery from adaptation was determined by recording the response of a 290 ms duration probe tone following a 100 ms masker tone, equal in frequency to the probe, ranging from -5 to 20 dB relative to the probe amplitude. Two different time patterns of the whole tone recovery were observed. If short silent intervals and/or loud maskers were used, the time course of the probe tone can be described as an exponential increase in amplitude toward a steady state expressed by the equation: A(tp) = Ass-Yr e(-tp/tau Rr)-Ys e(-tp/tau Rs) ('ascending exponential'). For longer silent intervals and/or fainter maskers, the time course of the probe tone can be described by an exponential decrease expressed by the equation: A(tp) = Yr e(-tp/tau Rr) +Ys e(-tp/tau Rs) +A(ss) ('declining exponential').