Representation of periodicity pitch in the primary auditory cortex of the Mongolian gerbil

Responses of single and multi-units in the primary auditory cortex (AI) of the Mongolian gerbil to tones and amplitude modulations (AMs) were studied. Two types of AM stimuli were used: i) those which were spectrally inside the unit's frequency response range (FRR) and ii) those that were spectrally completely outside a unit's FRR. In response to AMs spectrally within a unit's FRR, a minority of units showed phase-locked responses tuned to a certain range of modulation frequencies (envelope periodicities) of the AM. Phase-locking was confined to frequencies up to 65 Hz, the range best modulation frequencies covered by this synchrony code (sync-BMFs) contained values between 5 and 30 Hz. In response to AMs completely outside a unit's FRR, 69% of the units in the low frequency area of AI (up to 3 kHz best frequency) exhibited phasic or tonic responses tuned to certain envelope periodicities with rate-BMFs ranging from 50 to about 3000 Hz, a range that might be sufficient to account for a representation of periodicity pitch. Topographic reconstruction of the recording sites of such units revealed that, in contrast to the sync-BMFs described above, the rate-BMF values were systematically distributed within AI, therefore reflecting a periodotopic organization. We suggest that the temporal quality of the percept (rhythm) might be coded via a temporal (synchrony) code whereas the non-temporal quality of the percept (pitch) is coded via a non-temporal (rate-place) code.