Subject: Re: physiological or ecological basis of auditory sharpness From: Eckard Blumschein <Eckard.Blumschein(at)E-TECHNIK.UNI-MAGDEBURG.DE> Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 08:15:58 +0200Yes, undoubtedly, high CFs are required for localization. I would like to mention a nice tutorial by Duda: http://www-engr.sjsu.edu/~knapp/HCIROD3D/3D_psych/reverb.htm He includes an explanation of IED (interaural envelope delay) and Franssen effect, and he summarizes: 'With some risk of oversimplification, we can generalize and say that in reverberant environments it is the high-frequency energy, not the low-frequency energy, that is important for localization.' The question was: 'What might be the basis of (the extremely unpleasant) auditory sharpness evoked by spectral components...' As we understand from the tutorial, the basal turn of cochlea is designed for localization of single events like clicks or bat calls rather than for recognition of any continuous tone. Maybe, Duda intentionally wrote high-frequency 'energy' - not power - as to indicate that high power, i.e. the product of energy and time, is not relevant for natural sounds. By the way, I reiterate my opinion that so called acoustic power should not be confused with the power acting on the hair cells because the OHCs are largely powered from stria vascularis. One can imagine that high power puts hair cells, etc. at risk. However, can this risk be directly signalized to the brain? Perhaps not. Perhaps, very high frequency causes discomfort partially for similar reasons as does very low frequency. The auditory system increases gain because it cannot easily attribute a matching pitch. Also, localized efferent feedback would not make sense for natural signals being typically much too brief for that, while it is impossible for frequencies below the lowest CF. Furthermore, cochlea has to cope with unwelcome misleading synchrony. Spontaneous rate and threshold of auditory nerve fibers are crucial for that, as well as for loudness perception. So the physiological basis seems to be diverse. We don't have to resort in the Gibbs effect, and 15 kHz does definitely not play any role in human communication. Eckard http://iesk.et.uni-magdeburg.de/~blumsche/AuditoryFunction.html