Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 26, 2025

fMRI Mapping of Brain Activity Associated with the Vocal Production of Consonant and Dissonant Intervals
Published on: May 23, 2017
Neural correlates of tonal loudness, intensity discrimination, and duration discrimination
Shigeyuki Kuwada1, Constantine Trahiotis1,2
1Department of Neuroscience, University of Connecticut Health Center, Farmington, Connecticut 06030, USA.
Abstract:
A long-standing quest in audition concerns understanding relations between behavioral measures and neural representations of changes in sound intensity. Here, we examined relations between aspects of intensity perception and central neural responses within the inferior colliculus of unanesthetized rabbits (by averaging the population's spike count/level functions). We found parallels between the population's neural output and: (1) how loudness grows with intensity; (2) how loudness grows with duration; (3) how discrimination of intensity improves with increasing sound level; (4) findings that intensity discrimination does not depend on duration; and (5) findings that duration discrimination is a constant fraction of base duration.
More Related Videos
Related Concept Videos
Perceiving Loudness, Pitch, and Location
Place theory, or place coding, suggests that different pitches are heard because various sound waves activate specific locations along the cochlea's basilar membrane. The brain determines the pitch of a sound by...
Sound Intensity Level
The human ear can perceive an extensive range of sound intensity, necessitating the use of the logarithmic scale to define a physical quantity—the intensity level. It is a ratio of two intensities and...
Perception of Sound Waves
The pitch of a sound depends on the frequency and the pressure amplitude of the source. Two sounds of the same...
Hearing
Sound Intensity
The Cochlea

