Subject: Re: maximal hearable speed of pulses From: Gerry Stefanatos <Gstefana@xxxxxxxx> Date: Wed, 17 May 2006 10:09:13 -0400Dear Len: Normal hearing individuals can discriminate one from two clicks with as little as 1 to 3 ms of silence separating them (Miller & Taylor, 1948; Patterson & Green, 1970; Hirsh, 1975). Interestingly, some patients with temporal lobe lesions can demonstrate problems with temporal resolution reflected in click fusion thresholds in the order of a couple of hundred ms (see Stefanatos, Gershkoff and Madigan (2005) for a recent review.) Tones require a longer ISI, in the order of 20-50 ms, as you noted. While this tells us something about the minimal time between auditory events that can be resolved by the human ear or brain, I am not sure that this tells us much about resolution of a continuous train of pulses or when fast tapping on a snaredrum become a drumroll. But I hope it's helpful information. Gerry Gerry A. Stefanatos, D. Phil. Director, Cognitive Neurophysiology Laboratory Moss Rehab Research Institute Albert Einstein Medical Center 1200 W. Tabor Rd. Philadelphia, PA 19141 Tel: (215) 456-5962 Fax: (215) 456-5926 >>> Len Vrijders <len.vrijders@xxxxxxxx> 05/17/06 8:05 AM >>> Hello everyone, I am looking for any results on experiments that give a minimal time between events so that the human ear can still hear two sperate events. At an interval of 50ms, people hear a tone instead of sperate beats, maybe that is common knowledge but I would like to read a bit more on the subject. People seem to be very interested in investigating the frequencies we can hear, and I can find many articles dealing with this subject, but I would like to know more about the hearable speed of pulses, e.g. when does fast tapping on a snaredrum become a drumroll... Does anyone know any articles on this matter or is maybe currently involved in any research around the subject? Thanks in advance, -Len