Editor's Summary
25 August 2005
Music to the ears
Pitch is fundamental to our perception of music. A single musical note is placed higher or lower on a musical scale according to its pitch, which is related to the frequency of its acoustic waveform. But pitch perception can remain constant despite large changes in the acoustical input. This may be important for music appreciation, and, importantly, speech perception. Animals too can recognize pitch and now experiments in marmoset monkeys provide evidence for neurons that respond in similar ways to a variety of different sounds that all have the same fundamental frequency. These neurons, grouped in a specific area in the auditory cortex, may therefore encode the pitch of complex sounds.
News and Views: Neuroscience: Finding the missing fundamental
The whole orchestra tunes up to an A note from the oboe — but how do our brains tell that all the different sounds are the same pitch? The discovery of pitch-sensitive neurons provides some clues.
Robert J. Zatorre
doi:10.1038/4361093a
Letter: The neuronal representation of pitch in primate auditory cortex
Daniel Bendor and Xiaoqin Wang
doi:10.1038/nature03867
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