Re: The climb of absolute pitch

[Bob Masta <audio@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Can someone explain the supposed mechanism behind neural 
timing and pitch shift?   I don't understand what is being 
proposed.  As I undestand it, since pitch is encoded as 
*place* along the BM, the neurons respond with a firing 
rate that encodes *loudness* for their particular frequency 
place.  The firing rate does not encode the frequency of 
the sound itself.  

What am I missing here?

Best regards,

Bob Masta

=============
On 1 Dec 2012 at 9:50, Pierre Divenyi wrote:

> Hi Oded,
> 
> Your three-step reasoning makes sense but, indeed, it should be
> experimentally verified. As to the age-related change of neural
> oscillations, Art Wingfield believes that the brain "slows down" as we get
> older. Such a slowing-down could also explain the upward AP shift because
> our reference would shift downward. How this central effect squares with the
> peripheral, BM-stiffening effect is unknown but, again, could be studied in
> the lab.
> 
> -Pierre
> 
> On 12/1/12 5:17 AM, "Oded Ghitza" <oghitza@xxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> Hi Pierre,
> If (1) you accept Julius's model of pitch perception, (2) interpret -- as he
> did -- the central component of the model as a mechanism that adjusts f0 of
> an internal harmonic sieve to the point where the MMSE between the sieve and
> the input pattern is minimum, and (3) assume that such mechanism is realized
> by a neuronal circuitry with oscillations ("rhythms") at the core (maybe
> related to Langer, in the late 80's and in the context of pitch perception,
> who measured "temporal rings" in chicks); then, a possible way to examine
> the phenomenon (whether perceived pitch should go up or down, in
> particular), is to look at how the frequency range of neuronal oscillations
> change with age. 
> --
> Oded.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

Bob Masta
 
            D A Q A R T A
Data AcQuisition And Real-Time Analysis
           www.daqarta.com
Scope, Spectrum, Spectrogram, Signal Generator
    Science with your sound card!