Silicon modeling of pitch perception

We have designed and tested an integrated circuit that models human pitch perception. The chip receives as input a time-varying voltage corresponding to sound pressure at the ear and produces as output a map of perceived pitch. The chip is a physiological model; subcircuits on the chip correspond to known and proposed structures in the auditory system. Chip output approximates human performance in response to a variety of classical pitch-perception stimuli. The 125,000-transistor chip computes all outputs in real time by using analog continuous-time processing.