Re: Pitch orientation-discriminating feature detectors?

[FATIMA HUSAIN <fthusain@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

There is a recent article in ARLO (Acoustics Research Letters Online)
by Michael Gordon and david Poeppel titled "Inequality in
identification of direction of frequency change (up vs. down) for
rapid frequency modulated sweeps". This is a behavioral study.

You can go to http://ojps.aip.org/ARLO/top.jsp
and search on Gordon and Poeppel. The URL is just too long to
copy paste.

Copying the abstract here --
The abilities of human subjects to identify direction (up vs. down) of
frequency modulation (FM) of individual tone sweeps at various rates of FM
are examined, in particular, how fast FM sweeps can be without impairing a
subject's ability to accurately identify them as upward or downward. This
ability may be relevant to the auditory encoding of rapid formant
transitions, important perceptual cues in speech sounds. In a single-trial
2AFC task, subjects identified randomly presented FM sweeps by pressing
one of two labeled keys (up or down). Subjects were significantly better
at identifying upward sweeps than downward ones at rapid FM rates (6.2
oct./sec.25.0 oct/sec., parameterized as stimulus duration at constant
bandwidth). 2001 Acoustical Society of America.

--fatima
Fatima T. Husain, Ph.D.
NIDCD/NIH

> >Dear list,
> >
> >Do we happen to know of anything indicating the existence of
> >pitch-orientation selective cells in any species, eg cell-assemblies
> >responding specifically to, say, upward moving pitch, rather than
> >downward movement?
> >
> >A further question: do we happen to know whether pitch difference
> >sensitivity responds to orientation of movement?
> >
> >Many thanks for any pointers.
> >
> >-- eliot
> >
> >---
> >Eliot Handelman PhD
> >Montreal, Canada
>