Pitch And Periodicity Flashcards
What is the frequency of pure tones represented by in the auditory nerve?
Pattern of firing rates across characteristic frequencies (rate-place code)
And by the pattern of phase locked activity across time (temporal code)
**probable that the temporal code is used to produce the sensation of pitch.
What does pitch correspond to?
It corresponds to repetition rate.
The range of repetition that evokes a musical pitch extends from 30-5000hz.
Which harmonic produces a clearer pitch?
Complex tones produce a clear pitch even if the first harmonic (the fundamental) is absent.
Resolved harmonics are dominant and produce a clearer pitch than the unresolved harmonics.
Most complex tones that we encounter in the environment are determined by a combination of the information from the individual resolved harmonic.
What does the pattern recognition model suggest? And what can this model not account for?
It suggests that the auditory system extracts the frequencies of the resolved harmonics and uses the patterning of these harmonics to estimate the fundamental frequency.
The model cannot account for the pitch of unresolved harmonics.
How is the period of the complex tone reflected?
It’s is reflected in the time intervals between spikes of nerve fibres responding to both resolved and unresolved harmonics.
Modern temporal models assume activity is combined across nerve fibers with different characteristic frequencies to estimate the period.
