Re: The climb of absolute pitch

[Leon van Noorden <leonvannoorden@xxxxxxx>]

The only suggestion I have on this that in speech (at least in Dutch)
the - un-accented - pitch goes gradually down during a sentence.
Listeners are usually not aware of this.
Against this background a rise of 100 cents is more of a signal dan going down 100 cents.
That AP have a stronger effect could indicate that they have a stronger connection
to the pitch of their voice, which is proposed in some theories.

Regards,
Leon

On 04 Dec 2012, at 23:38, Chuck Larson wrote:

> To all of you experts on absolute pitch, I have a question for you.
> 
> I've been following your discussion on AP musicians in hopes that I would
> learn something from you that would explain some of our EEG results. We
> have tested musicians with absolute pitch and relative pitch on a
> vocalization experiment in which they heard their voice (through
> headphones) either shift up 100 cents or down 100 cents.  The shifting was
> done with a harmonizer.  We also recorded ERPs triggered by the onset of
> the pitch-shift stimulus.  In general the musicians with AP had larger
> magnitude left hemisphere potentials (P200) than did the relative pitch
> musicians.  However, we also noted that for the UPWARD pitch-shift
> stimulus, the P200 in the AP musicians, in contrast to the RP musicians,
> was more strongly left lateralized than for DOWNWARD pitch shifts.  I am
> trying to figure out why an upward shift in voice pitch auditory feedback
> in AP musicians would show stronger left hemisphere activation than a
> downward pitch shift.
> 
> I'D greatly appreciate any ideas you may have on this.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Chuck
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ________________________________________
> 
> Chuck Larson
> Dept. of Communication Sciences and Disorders
> Room 3-348
> 2240 Campus Dr.
> Northwestern University
> Evanston, IL 60208
> Phone: 847-491-2424
> Cell: 847-830-5432
> Fax: 847-491-4975
> email: clarson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 12/3/12 7:38 PM, "Kevin Austin" <kevin.austin@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
>> Thanks.
>> 
>> I had been led to believe that frequency was encoded along the BM, and
>> that pitch was the interpretation of this stimulus.
>> 
>> Kevin
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On 2012, Dec 2, at 8:47 AM, Bob Masta wrote:
>> 
>>> 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
>>> 
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