Mechanisms of signal analysis and pattern perception in periodicity pitch

Progress in the knowledge of auditory processing of complex sounds has been made through coordinated psychophysical, physiological and theoretical studies of periodicity pitch and combination tones. Periodicity pitch is the basis for human perception of musical notes and pitch of voiced speech. The mechanism of perception involves harmonic pattern recognition on the complex Fourier frequency spectra generated by auditory frequency analysis. Combination tones are perceptible distortion tones generated within the cochlea by nonlinear interaction of component stimulus tones. Perception of periodicity pitch is quantitatively accounted for by a two-stage process of frequency analysis subject to random errors and significant nonlinearities, followed by a pattern recognizer that operates very efficiently to measure the period of musical and speech sounds. The basic characteristic of the first stage is a Gaussian standard error function that quantifies the randomness in aural estimation of frequencies of component tones in a complex tone stimulus. Efficient aural measurement of neural spike intervals from the eighth nerve provides a physiological account for the psychophysical characteristic of aural frequency analysis with complex sounds. Although cochlear filtering is an essential stage in auditory frequency analysis, neural time following, rather than details of the filter characteristics, is the decisive factor in determining the precision of aural frequency measurement. It is likely that peripheral auditory coding is similar for sounds in periodicity pitch and in speech perception, although the 'second stage' representing central processing would differ.