Topographic organization is essential for pitch perception

摘要

Pitch is the perceptual attribute we associate most with melodies in music, patterns of bird songs, and the distinctions between speakers' voices. It plays a key role in the organization, segregation, and identification of sound sources in cluttered auditory scenes because it is derived from acoustic cues that closely reflect the material and geometric properties of resonating objects. Pitch has been the subject of intensive psychoacoustic studies for well over a century. In recent decades, physiological investigations in humans and animals have attempted to locate and understand the biological substrate underlying pitch perception at various levels of the auditory nervous system. However, despite all efforts, a deep understanding of the mechanisms that give rise to the pitch percept remains elusive. This uncertainty has generated passionate debates between the proponents of two very different theories of pitch, one based on the place or location of neural activation patterns, and the other on their temporal modulations. This state of affairs is now likely to change dramatically in favor of the place theories with the publication of results of intricately designed psychoacoustic experiments by Oxenham et al. (1) reported in this issue of PNAS.